Ajay Talwar

Web Page of

Ajay Talwar,

Amateur Astronomer & Flight Purser - Air India.

Astronomical Calendar (India Centric)

An Iridium Satellite Flare, 5 May 2007, This is as bright as they come, magnitude -8. The morning of 5th May at 04:03:57 the angle of the left antenna of Iridium-83 satellite just was right to spotlight my house at Gurgaon and the surrounding 5-6 km circle, and because of the advance email received from Calsky & second opinion from Heavens-above, I was under the spotlight to capture it. The flare was at 50° altitude on the border of Hercules & Ophiuchus constellations. The bright star on the right side of the picture is Alphecca, Rasalhague can be seen roughly in the middle on top of the picture, and Arcturus is shining brightly through the tree on the right bottom. The event lasted for about 15-20 seconds, the satellite appearing to naked eye about 10-15 seconds before the flare. But there is no time to set the camera after you have seen the satellite. I was continuously shooting 30seconds shots one after the other, and I was lucky to get the entire flare in one shot.

Camera - Nikon D70 on tripod
Datetime - 2007:05:04 04:04
Exposure time - 30 s
F-number - 6.3
Focal length - 18 mm
F.L. in 35mm film - 27 mm

Comet Lovejoy, C/2007 E2 21 April 2007, The new comet (discovered 15 March 2007) is the brightest comet visible in the skies at this moment. It does not have any tail, a very diffuse coma which is making it difficult to see visually through telescopes. Its motion is remarkable, moving at a quick 8.8 arc seconds per minute through Aquila towards Hercules and Lyra. I went to Lake Palace hotel Siliserh, Alwar to setup my telescope in the balcony over the lake and catch the comet, while Neelam, Arjune and Nakul slept in the rooms next door. The sky from Siliserh is quite good and I was able to spot the comet as it rose right above the hill tops.

Camera Model - NIKON D70
Software - Nikon Capture Camera Control 4.1.0 W
Datetime - 2007:04:21 from 0146 Hrs to 0314 Hrs
Exposure time - 180 secs each image
F-number - 4
Focal length - 500 mm
F.L. in 35mm film - 750 mm

Comet Machholz, 5 January 2005, Its sporting two tails, near Pleiades. Aldebaran and Hyades is on the left-bottom of the picture.

I shot this picture from Nainital Observatory, which has a very nice atmosphere to do these sort of astronomy activities. The staff at the observatory are great and friendly. I always am in awe of the instruments and the activities that I see professionals doing over there, and found that the feeling is mutual!!

Camera Model - NIKON D70
Software - Nikon Capture Camera Control 4.1.0 W
Datetime - 2005:01:05 23:45:18
Exposure time - 1800 s
F-number - 4.5
Focal length - 70 mm
F.L. in 35mm film - 105 mm

Saturn Near Opposition, 11 January 2006.

I shot this picture from home balcony. The view from this balcony is towards south and east, only. So aligning a polar mount is quite cumbersome, or rather impossible. Fortunately there is a way out, I use the LX200 mount in Altazimuth, roughly point towards south, and the synchronise on a bright star or planet. These days a low-cost webcam is considered the best way to image planets. I use Philips ToUcam, coupled with the Meade 8". This photo uses a 2X barlow too.

Media Type - AVI, Video
Length - 2:58
Frame rate - 5
Created - 11-Jan-06 11:38 PM

Software used - Spotlife, Registax & Photoshop.

Venus Shot in daytime, 22 January 2006. A really chilling thought - I reach my site days before, setup my equipment, polar align my telescopes, rehearse for 3-4 days beforehand. What if there are clouds on the TSE day? Well, I pack and run to find a cloud free site, then what about my polar alignment? I setup the telescope my LX200 in Altazimuth mode, connect a laptop, and synchronise on the Sun! hmmm a warming solution.

That's what I was practicing the other day, and realised that finding Venus in daytime is just a click away! Venus is apparently quite large, in its position between the Sun and the Earth, it compares with Saturn above, without even a barlow in the optical train. But it sure was quite turbulent in the afternoon.

Imager - ToUcam webcamera

Telescope - Meade LX200 8"

Media Type - AVI, Video
Length - 2:58
Frame rate - 5
Created - 22-Jan-06 1:58 PM

Software used - Spotlife, Registax & Photoshop.

Venus 14 days later, 05 February 2006, shot again in daytime. Sanat gave me an idea, click a series of Venus photos in the course of its orbit and make an animation. Well long period animations are notoriously difficult to make. Let me delve and see if I can complete this.

In this photo Venus crescent has gone slightly thicker, and slightly smaller as it recedes away from the Earth.

Imager - ToUcam webcamera

Telescope - Meade LX200 8"

Media Type - AVI, Video
Length - 2:58
Frame rate - 5
Created - 5-Feb-06 1:13 PM

Software used - Spotlife, Registax & Photoshop.

Total Solar Eclipse, 29 March 2006.

We were at Side, Antalya region in Turkey for the Eclipse. This photo is a combination of 5 photos shot with the Nikon D70, with a 300mm Zoom lens. A single photo cannot capture the whole extent and the range of the corona, the brightness range is simply too much for a digital camera to capture, or even a film for that matter. This combination is a hurried attempt in-flight while I was returning from Istanbul to Yeni Delhi.

We were able to automate about 5 cameras with the help of laptops, (including one total failure). Four setups captured photographs as planned, automatically, and the team was able to watch the eclipse with binoculars totally ignoring the "clicking"!

Venus can be seen in this "All Sky Picture" taken during totality, This photo really sums up the scene from the 4th floor balcony of Club Voyage Hotel right on the Mediterranean Sea, during totality. The coronal spikes, clouds that formed just during the 3' 45" totality, the horizon above the turquoise waters was orangish and bright. You can almost feel the gust of wind that appeared from nowhere just as the totality approached, almost felt that the sudden draught is associated with the lunar shadow rushing past over you. We did not see the planes chasing totality high above us, but the jet trail clouds that they left behind! Do they ever consider that there are thousands of eclipse chasers below them?

Imager - Kodak Gold 400 ASA film

Camera - Pentax ME-Super, 20mm lens.

Exposure - 10 seconds

Total Solar Eclipse in One Frame.

This is one of the automated photo. An old HP Omnibook Laptop, ran the software made by Sanat, ordered clicks to the Pentax ME-Super, via the winder, every 10 minutes. The film was not engaged in the sprokets, but taped firmly inside the camera to record all exposures on 1 frame. The Partial Phase exposures were all 1/250, with Baader filter the totality exposure was 2 second without any filter. The clouds that you see were there only for the durtation of the totality, some of them being jet trails. Lens used - 50mm. Click on the photo for a big photo, and to see mercury in the photo!

The Temperature & Humidity graph, The temprature dropped by 7° till totality, and kept on dropping even after the eclipse. It did not rise back to its original but kept hovering around 21°Celcius. We logged the temprature from a digital display thermometer, which also displayed humidity. The instrument was kept in shade. The time scale at the bottom is UT, (the local time was 3 hours ahead of UT, Turkish Time DST)

The Corona and Prominences.

Slightly better combination photo than before. This photo is a recreation of corona as the eye perceived it. Eight photographs from the Nikon D70 and a 300 mm lens were combined to produce this photo. You can see corona up to 5 diameters of the sun, as well as the prominences (I wish I had unlimited space on this website, and I wish you had unlimited speed and bandwidth, so I could place a unedited .tiff file here to see all that together in the same picture.) Several pictures of varying exposures are combined to make this composite photo. At first glance this photo on the right looks horribly overexposed, but it did contribute to the combined picture, the outermost portion of the corona came from this overexposed photo.

Home

Astronomical Calendar (India Centric)