Daytime Astronomy

[cometcatcher]

And now for something completely different. Back in October I thought I'd try for a few stars in the daytime while the Sun was still well up. I had previously observed a few at midday so thought I'd try and capture some piccies. By the time I got around to it, it was 4pm with the Sun still shining in on the observatory.

Alpha Centauri was first up, splitting the double. Hadar was next, then onto Antares. I was surprised how bright Antares was. It was the brightest of the lot. Altair was next. I then changed scopes from the GSO 10" F4 to a Meade LX90 ACF 8" F10 SCT for the last pic of Alnair.

Captured with a ZWO ASI 183mm Pro with a 720nm IR filter using ROI to take a short video sequence and then stills made from that. Seeing was rather poor. The atmosphere seemed more turbulent than at night.

I wonder what Bortle scale number this would be haha!

[Stonius]

That's cool! Well done! :-)

[strongmanmike]

How cool Kevin :thumbsup: stars during the day...now, move onto nebulae :D see if you can grab the Trap, Eta Carina etc :thumbsup:

Mike

[Merlin66]

Antares being an M1.5 Ib "Red Giant" star has lots of it's light out in the red- NIR, so would appear brighter in the NIR pass filter.

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Markus.



Yeah I think I might need a stronger light pollution filter for nebula. :P

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Ken. Thought that might be the case.

[RickS]

Pretty cool, Kevin!

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Rick. Something to do while it's cloudy all night lol.

[LewisM]

That's bloody good stuff!

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Lewis!

[skysurfer]

This is indeed nice.
I also do similar things. Even with my 110mm refractor, many stars are remarkably easy to find.

[cometcatcher]

Yes, I found the ED100 great for browsing daytime stars as well. Possibly better than the reflectors due to less stray light.