Anjal Sharma's Astrophotography Pages
This is a four panel mosaic of the sun in H-alpha showing both surface features and prominences. This image was taken through the "Coronashi" H-alpha solar scope, which is a Coronado SM40 ~0.7A H-alpha etalon with the TMax tuner on my Takahashi FS-60C fluorite doublet apo refractor equipped with a Coronado BF10 10mm blocking filter. A Celestron 2X barlow was utilized to enable scope operation at f/11.2 and the SPC900NC webcam was utilized to collect 1min videos at 20fps. As the entire solar disc cannot be fit into the fov of this webcam's small CCD chip, four individual panels of the sun were obtained and then combined in Photoshop CS2 to obtain this mosaic of the full solar disc. The proms were captured in the same fashion as four individual panels, except the gain was turned up significantly to capture these faint features on the solar limb. Clicking on this image will load the full resolution version in a separate window or tab.
Stereo Jupiter - October 16 2011 (Cross Eyed View)
These two images of Jupiter were acquired within 15 minutes of each other on the morning of October 16, 2011 at around 5:30AM. A 3-D view of Jupiter can be enjoyed by crossing your eyes while focused on the images. These images were obtained through the Celestron 6 inch f/8 achromatic refractor equipped with the Chromacor U-1 using a Philips SPC900NC webcam. A Televue 5X powermate was utilized to enlarge the image scale so that the scope was operating at f/40. The seeing was reasonably good which explains the quality of the images, particularly the image on the right. 4 minute videos of the planet were collected for each of these images at 5fps and then aligned, stacked and wavelet processed in Registax 4. The GRS is visible - it looks more pastel orange than red doesn't it?
I recently acquired a Celestron 150mm f/8 achromatic refractor as an inexpensive replacement for my superb APM/TMB 130 f/6 triplet apo refractor which I sold to raise funds for a fast astrograph. This 6 inch achro has very decent optics and a super nice MoonLite focuser which is perfect for imaging the planets. However, being a Fraunhofer achromat, at a fast focal ratio of f/8, there is significant chromatic aberration around bright objects. Case in point above being Jupiter. Only the high contrast features are captured in images through this achromatic scope. I star tested it and was finally able to acquire an Aries Chromacor U-1 for this scope. The images through the scope depict that the Chromacor works really well in pulling short wavelengths close to the common focus of red and green. The best results are obtained when the chromacor to focal plane distance is as close to 161mm as possible. The Chromacor is a must-have if planetary imaging/critical viewing is on your mind with a large fast achromatic refractor!! Click the image above for a short animation depicting the rotation of Jupiter taken with this Chromacor/6 inch Achro combo.
This is a full disc image of the Sun taken through the Celestron 6 inch f/8 achromat with Baader Astrosolar film front filter (5.7 inch aperture) and Baader narrowband CCD imaging filters (H-alpha 7nm, OIII 8nm and SII 7nm). The FLI ML8300 was used to capture this image. Consists of 64 stacked frames at 0.02 - 0.04 sec each in each of three narrowband filter channels. The images were aligned and stacked and mildly wavelet sharpened in Registax 4. The tricolor false color image was assembled in Photoshop CS2 and is in the classic Hubble palette, namely Red = SII, Green = H-alpha and Blue = OIII. Click on the picture above to view the full resolution (8.3 megapixel) image.
