New Astro Blog

Astro Blog will detail the use of these two telescopes, a 9.25" and 14"
EdgeHD from Celestron.

Coming Soon! New Astro Blog

The exciting new future dedicated Astro blog is where you can partake in exciting astro details, projects and experiments!

Astro blog will include new ideas and techniques, observatory and equipment details for astro imaging the Moon, planets and/or deep sky objects. One major focus will include the penetration of clouds, less than ideal seeing conditions, and light pollution,. This includes increasing the quality of results and data obtained through smog, fog, haze, thin clouds, chemical air pollution, and minimizing or eliminating specific lighting such as LED, mercury vapor and sodium. The blog page may also include telescope, accessory and equipment reviews and hidden details revealed on the best astro deals worldwide. Astro blog may show results and details of what can be accomplished in the heart of the inner city when imaging through bright Bortle 9 skies with the highest levels of light pollution. Some interesting questions may include how to pole align when the North is blocked, and how to star calibrate the telescope when no stars are visible.

Singularity Observatory Moon Image Scale Experiments

The Moon - Experimenting with Image Scale & iPhone
One interesting part of astro imaging the Moon is image scale. With telescope and iPhone camera, which has two camera lenses, one can choose a 1x wide angle lens, 2x telephoto lens or simply vary the EP and FR lens combinations. 

Be sure to move the camera to center the Moon relative to the axis of the lens used. This method is afocal. This method works well and even by introducing an additional 6 lenses into the optical train, any reflections are eliminated by camera position.

The quick and dirty examples are shown to demonstrate image scale, taken without a camera mount and without a lunar drive to follow the Moon. The curvature at the bottom of the moon is caused by the restrictive FOV and gives an idea of image scale. Both images are taken with an iPhone XS Max, March 27th, 2019 up to 1am local time.

The first image is 1/79th second exposure. The second image is captured with the same 4.25mm F1.8 lens at ISO400 and 1/40th second exposure. The image scale was converted by the changing configurations of EP and FR. When a camera mount and drive are used, the image scale can be increased dramatically by eliminating the FR and selecting a different EP of shorter FL. Tracking will allow still greater EFL and the use of a 2x or greater Barlow lens. A 14-inch Celestron EdgeHD telescope was used for all experiments during hazy and cloudy conditions. IP compensation removed light pollution, fog, haze and clouds. The first image is converted to BW while the second image shows color through haze - in both instances the Moon showed the effects of atmospheric dispersion being relatively close to the horizon. The telescope was indoors shooting through an R Sky Zone which can be seen at the links.

Indoor Observing Links
https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory-indoor.html

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory_20.html

Singularity Observatory Live Astro Photo

Singularity Observatory
Capture a Live Astro Photo

by Humanoido

It's alive!!! Apple has introduced several new iPhone cameras and software that changes everything when it comes to taking a photo and doing astronomical imaging! It's called Live Photos and the reality of this new kind of photo is it holds enough photos to make a 1.5 second video and has many other useful tricks.

This is a spectacular boon for astro imaging the Moon and planets as a single best shot can be chosen or several best shots extracted and summed into one more perfect image. It's one way of shooting through those pesky sky conditions when the blurring atmospheric seeing conditions clear for only a fraction of a second. Doing Astro Live Photo imaging changes the game for the better, making imaging through your telescope far more easy. It can sidestep the other lengthy procedures of image processing.

What is Live Photos?
Live Photos is an iPhone camera feature that brings your photos to life by creating a moving image. Instead of freezing a moment in time, you can now capture a Live Photo with movement and sound. iPhone Live Photos can be converted into stunning long exposure images. A Live Photo captures 1.5 seconds of video and audio both before and after you press the shutter button to take a photo. As well as a high quality still JPEG image, you also get a 3 second Live Photo with sound. When you play a Live Photo, you don’t see the still image that you took when you pressed the shutter button. Instead, you’ll see a 3 second moving image. When you shoot a Live Photo, the iPhone also captures a still image. This lets you relive those moments before and after you took the photo.

Phones and OS Working with Live Photo
You can only shoot a Live Photo with the iPhone 6s/6s Plus or newer. But you can share them to older iPhones or an iPad as long as that device is running iOS 9 or later. The Live Photo feature is available on the following iPhones:

iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus
iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X
iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR

How it Works
How does the iPhone know to record video for the 1.5 seconds before you press the shutter button? With Live Photos enabled, the built-in camera app starts recording video as soon as you open the app. So when you press the shutter button, your iPhone has already captured the 1.5 seconds before the shot. It saves this footage along with the 1.5 seconds following the image capture. Your iPhone discards all other video footage captured before and after those 1.5 seconds. So you don’t need to worry that the constant video recording will fill up your iPhone’s storage.

How To Switch On Live Photo
Start by opening the built-in camera app, and set the shooting mode to Photo. You can’t shoot Live Photos in any of the other shooting modes. The Live Photos setting is the round icon shown on the top of the screenshot below. If the icon is yellow, Live Photos is on. If the icon is white, tap it once to turn on Live Photos.
Live Photos is on by default, but you can switch it off at any time by tapping the yellow Live Photos icon. When you switch on Live Photos, the word “Live” appears in a yellow box as shown. This will disappear after a couple of seconds.

Video Starting
Remember that the 1.5 seconds of video starts before you press the shutter button. So make sure you compose your shot and hold it there for a couple of seconds before you press the shutter. If you don’t do this, the first part of your Live Photo will be of you moving the camera to frame the shot. Likewise, your iPhone will record video for 1.5 seconds after you’ve pressed the shutter. So make sure you keep your phone still for a couple of seconds after taking the shot.

Live Photo Audio
Live Photos capture audio as well as video. So you’ll hear any sound in your Live Photo when you play it back.

Turn Off Live Photo
When you no longer want to shoot Live Photos, switch off the Live Photos feature so that the icon turns white.

How to View on an Older iPhone Model
View Live Photos on an older iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that can run iOS 9 or later. Find the Live Photo you want to view. Touch and hold the photo to animate it.

How to view Live Photos on a newer iPhone model
View a Live Photo on Apple's current-generation iPhone models, see list. Launch the Photos app from your Home screen. Find the Live Photo you want to view. Press firmly on the photo to animate it. It will blur for just a second and then start to play.

Storage
Live Photos take up a lot of storage space on your iPhone. So if you leave it on for every shot you may find that your phone becomes full.

Processing
Processing your live images is easy with Apple's free Photo, a program on iMac computers and an app on iPhones. You can edit Live Photos in the Photos app in a similar way to editing still images. For Live Photos there are some extra editing tools. When you open a Live Photo, tap Edit at the top right of the screen. The editing tools will appear. Crop and rotate, apply a filter, or make lighting and color adjustments. The wand icon is an autocorrect option for enhancing exposure and color with a single tap.

Change the Key Photo

You can change the key photo (the one you see in your photo library) using the slider at the bottom of the screen. Move the slider until you find the image you want. Tap Make Key Photo to confirm your choice: A white dot will appear over your chosen photo. A grey dot appears over the original key photo in case you ever want to go back to it. When you’ve finished editing your Live Photo, tap Done to save the changes. If you want to remove the editing you applied, you can revert back to the original Live Photo at any time. In the Photos app, find the Live Photo you want to revert, tap Edit, then tap Revert. On the message that appears, tap Revert to Original. Another option under the Edit facility is to switch from a Live Photo to a still image (without making any edits). When you’re viewing a Live Photo, tap Edit, then tap the yellow Live Photos icon to convert it to a still image. The icon will turn white to show that it’s no longer a Live Photo. Tap Done to confirm.

Special Effects

Since iOS 11, you can apply three special effects to your Live Photos: Loop, Bounce and Long Exposure.

Long Exposure

The Long Exposure option creates a photo with a slow shutter effect. It overlays all the video frames from your Live Photo to create a single image. Long exposure with scenes that include movement will blur the motion. With a telescope, make sure tracking in on and the image is ultimately stable. This ensures that the stationary parts of the scene remain sharp in the final image. Long exposures should lessen image noise.

Turn a Live Photo into a GIF
There's no longer the need for a GIF creator app. You can do it all right in the Photos app! Launch the Photos app from your Home screen. Find and tap the Live Photo you'd like to turn into a GIF. Swipe up on the center of the screen to reveal the animation options. Tap Loop if you'd like to loop the Live Photo as a GIF.

How to Extract a Still Shot from a Live Photo
If you want the still photo only, you can make a copy. Open the Photos app. Select the Live Photo you want to extract a still shot from. Tap the Share icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. Tap Duplicate in the option tray at the bottom of the screen. Tap Duplicate as Still Photo. A copy of the still photo will appear in your library right next to the original Live Photo. You can delete the Live Photo if you no longer want it to take up storage on your iPhone.

Links
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207310

Singularity Observatory Focal Reducer

Singularity Observatory
Focal Reducer Experi-ment

The Celestron Focal Reducer is a great product, designed to change a telescope from f11 to f7. It simply screws into the visual back of an SCT followed by the star diagonal and eyepiece.

by Humanoido

This means more of a large object like the Moon will fit into the field of view when looking through the telescope's eyepiece. Exactly how much more of an object, like the Moon, is visible with the Focal Reducer in place? This experiment will qualitatively determine that result.

Results are shown at the left. The top image highlights the Moon imaged through the eyepiece without a focal reducer. The Moon has a much larger image scale and does not fit into the field of view. Below, the image highlighted was taken with the focal reducer in place. The Moon just fits into the field of view. The focal reducer is one that offers edge correction for SCTs that are not already corrected. Telescopes like the EdgeHD are corrected to the edge and Celestron does not recommend using this focal reducer. However, it works well, and the author bought it for CCD use which covers only a small center area which is fully corrected. All in all, the image is rather good at the edge, even the focal reducer was not recommended.

Keep in mind this experiment was performed with the supplied Celestron stock 23mm eyepiece which appears to add color fringing aberrations with or without the focal reducer. Also, the hand held iPhone Xs Max camera adds numerous lenses into the optical train which may cause reflections, differences in lighting and focus issues depending on the orientation.

Celestron 14" f/11 EdgeHD CGX-L
Celestron Luminos 23mm FL Eyepiece 2"
Celestron Star Diagonal
Celestron Focal Reducer f/7
Apple iPhone Xs MAX

*Image experiment on Thursday evening, March 21, 2019 at 8:05 pm local time, through clouds and haze, camera was hand held, no drive, shot indoors looking out to the sky view

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory-indoor.html

Singularity Observatory Indoor Observing Success!

Indoor Celestron 14" EdgeHD CGX-L telescope lunar imaging through an opened deck door.
The Moon is seen up about 45 degrees elevation in the sky, and left of the OTA

Moon by Humanoido, imaged Thursday,
March 21, 2019 at 8:05 pm local time.
EdgeHD 14" telescope, Celestron FR, stock
23mm 2" EP and star diagonal, hand held
Apple iPhone Xs MAX, imaged indoors, single
image, processed with Photo, corrected for
EP achromatic aberration, air pollution, and
light pollution.

Singularity Observatory
Successful Indoor Lunar Observing
with a Big Telescope

by Humanoido

Breaking News
Thursday March 21st 2019

I was surprised the immense massive and heavy Celestron 14-inch EdgeHD CGX-L telescope fit inside the home fully assembled, with three counterweights and castors on the feet to provide more resting surface area so as not to crack or mar the ceramic floor. The EdgeHD 14-inch is the largest telescope manufactured by Celestron Company and also the most expensive. It's important to get full use from this telescope with as many convenient observing programs as possible, even if the telescope must sometimes remain indoors for work on both day and night programs. During the day, the scope observes the forest jungle for wildlife conservation studies and runs experiments in optics and telescope dynamics. The telescope is also useful for tracking SPACE1's rocket launches and various space missions.

The top of the OTA just cleared the ceiling by about 2-inches, certainly a stroke of luck. The telescope room has a lowered ceiling to make space for a sleeping loft. Just a few days earlier a plan was outlined for operating the telescope from indoors while peering through the opened deck door.

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory_20.html

This was a quick experimental setup because the entire day was heavy overcast, and suddenly shortly after lunar rise time the haze began to dissipate and it was time to scramble to get set up with the new telescope and accessories. First off, the door was opened to the outside for an hour to achieve thermal equilibrium. The heat was on in the 85 deg. F. weather. Humidity was pushing 96%. The image of the Moon barely fit into the telescope's FOV after a Celestron FR was attached to get around f/7. The OTA needed precise positioning so at not to engulf the door frame. Only one photo was lucky enough to capture the entire Moon because the Moon was framed right up to the edged of the EP. The camera used is an iPhone Xs MAX in auto exposure mode, hand held in front of the EP (a very taxing and difficult process) for the afocal method of projection with a supplied Celestron 23mm 2-inch. No drive was running at the time and the telescope was moved by hand. The polar axis was only rough aligned with a compass. Images were shot through clouds, haze, strong air/light pollution. As the hour progressed, the telescope protruded into the door frame and obstructed the images.

This provides a lot of wiggle room for the future to obtain much higher resolution results. A portable smart phone mount is on order for the bionic phone, higher quality EPs, two FRs without field correction, and soon the CCD imager system will be setup with the computer along with the drive cabled to power the mount at the exact computed lunar rate. One thing noticed is the sky opening covers the exact area where the Moon passes by frequently in the springtime and is the same area where the planet Mars hovered during the 2018 opposition, and more recently Venus made an appearance. The sky-view has a peak elevation around 45 degrees facing East Southeast. The area could also catch Jupiter, Saturn and other objects with the correct timing.

Singularity Observatory Bullet Clutch & Focus

Singularity Observatory
Master the Bullet Clutch & Focus
There's a bullet inside your telescope and how you master its use will determine the fate of your telescope!

(According to Celestron) The Celestron EdgeHD telescope series have a mirror with clutches to apply tension to a flexible rod attached to the primary mirror support. With enough tension from both clutches, they lessen mirror shift or mirror flop when the scope is moved around in different orientations while in use.

Because they are flexible, the mirror clutches won’t prevent focusing while tightened. However, because they do put force on the mirror, they should be loosened when focusing. Otherwise the combination of their force and the focusing effort may put unequal pressure on the primary mirror, causing it to bind or unevenly shift while focusing. Note: The EdgeHD 14”, like older Celestron 14” tubes, has two regular mirror locks in addition to the clutches. These locks do just that – lock the mirror. They should be used when the telescope is transported, not to prevent mirror shift. Never focus when these locks are engaged - you may damage either the focuser or mirror.

(According to link) The primary reason for focus shift in the SCT design is a result of the mirror continuing to settle when the final focus is approached using clockwise motion of the focuser. This is because the mirror can continue to settle due to the play between the threads of the focuser shaft and the carrier on the mirror. If you approach final focus using a clockwise, you are "pushing" the mirror down. When you stop, gravity will allow the mirror to now settle away from the treads that are pushing it down to the opposite face of the treads so that they are now "Holding the mirror up." The best results with a SCT will be to always approach final focus using counterclockwise turns of the focuser.

For imagers, this "Lifts" the mirror into final position so that play in the focuser is never allowed to occur. The mirror is raised into position so that the mirror carrier on the baffle is always left at the same orientation, an there is no play left for it to settle back from. For visual observers, the added benefit is that approaching focus using CCW turns will result in less chasing focus (inward direction for Refractors and Reflectors). If you overshoot final focus slightly, the eyes normal visual accommodation can easily adjust to refocus the image on their own. I have had the Celeston EdgeHD locks apart and I can assure you that the design, if the locks themselves, cannot cause any mirror shift. This means that the only shift is the same that comes with regular SCTs and the solution is an aftermarket external focuser, or using CCW motions of the focuser to approach final focus (to may not eliminate, but will greatly reduce shift). Link

Singularity Observatory Telescope Indoor Observing

Celestron's largest most massive Aplanatic telescope aims at the sky through an open deck door

Singularity Observatory
Indoor Telescope Observing!
by Humanoido

Last summer heat rose to 120 degrees week after week in the shade. In the winter, the Monsoon period brought month after month of intermittent rain. Such intense heat or even a rain drop on a sensitive optical coating can destroy a telescope. Massive telescopes weighing many hundreds of pounds are not easily moved indoors and out. It also takes time to put on and take off coverings when suddenly a downpour happens. Is there a better solution?

Normally one would never put a telescope in a home and observe from the inside of the home. Heat waves from temperature differentials would destroy clear viewing. And, viewing through window glass is horrendous, causing smeared blurred images that won't focus. Not to mention vibrations from family members or apartment rental dudes walking around on the floor or your ceiling. But special circumstances require special measures.

During telescope assembly, it takes two people to place the massive OTA onto the mount, and one does not want to disassemble it and repeat the process anytime soon! The author wants only big telescopes, choosing to use the largest telescopes made by Celestron Company,  even they weigh in at several hundred pounds. In fact, the one telescope is so large it won't fit into many homes. So what to do?

The author has solved all these challenges with Celestron's largest and most massive Aplanatic telescope, applied indoors for observational astronomy. Here's how it's done:

* Keep the telescope fully assembled
* The telescope is placed in one room
* The telescope is vibration insulated from the floor
* The room has deck access with large sliding glass doors
* The room can be fully enclosed with a door

Close the room door, open the deck doors, and let the temperature stabilize for several hours. Position the telescope for the best sky position relative to the open deck doors for max viewing. It's likely the telescope will need to move as close as possible to the sliding glass door opening. This is your viewing portal, like an observatory dome slit opening with bi-parting shutter doors.

For approximated polar alignment, use an electronic compass. You won't be able to see the North Star or true north. If you want to use a GOTO computerized mounting, additionally use the one star alignment process on a known visible star through your sky portal. Calculate the size of the available sub section of sky and program it into your sky program on an adjacent computer or mobile device. Now you can determine which objects, i.e. Moon, planets, deep sky objects, etc. will be visible within your sky section, on certain days, seasons and times.

As the Earth turns, celestial objects become visible at different times and seasons. Access this information for best results. The plan works best when the deck doors face South, but it's also workable if they face East or West. Planets, like Venus, often flip from East as a morning object to West as an evening object. The Moon is seasonal, being in a better position depending on Spring or Fall. Deep Sky objects also rise and set and lie within seasonal constellations. Become a sleuth, doing the detective work to determine which objects of interest will grace the confines of your sky portal.

Note! Check back soon to see how this experiment pans out. We are planning to image the Full Moon on Thursday, March 21st, 2019, when it's calculated to be in the perfect position, fitting into the available sky view after rising in the East in the evening. Calculations show the indoor telescope looking through the open deck door will see almost up to 45 degrees elevation.