catfus

Hi and thanks to all of you , for your kind words!!! and translation for Stalin : Cześć i dzięnkuje bardzo do was wszystkich, za miłe słowa!! @ bamus - please find attached what you wanted to see :-) @ Łukasz83 - it's very simple to make a Herschel Prism, no rocket science here, just the piece of glass - called wedge prism - has to be adequate... the rest is simple construction to fit it to a 2'' mount. Pozdrawiam, Cata

Thanks Adam! I learn Polish everyday :-), but it is hard, and I'm not able to follow yet a full conversation in Polish. Maybe you can see my posts here, that I put once in a while, as a 'stain' of color added to this very very nice forum/community!! Thanks mlody188!!

Hello, I have managed to capture some AVIs of the Sun, in white light, during the Star-Party in Jodłów and I have processed one that shows the AR 1302 region. The results are ok given the imaging setup and you can see also the eruption that took place that day over this Active Region, as white streaks in the spots on the right side of the image. Hope you'll like it!! Details of equipment used: CFF 127mm f7 AS oilspaced refractor Meade TeleXtender 3x self-made Herschel Prism PGR Chamelon 125 best frames out of 1650 in Avistack 2 Wavelets in AstraImage Color in PS Pozdrawiam, Catalin

Hi, here are my pictures, taken from the terrace of my apt building, in Krakow. Wide angles are made with 550D + Canon 24-105 f4 L , close'up is through my 102mm oilspaced refractor, no amplification, EOS 550D, HDR fusion from 5 images (1.6s - 8s) @ ISO400. Hope you'll like them! Catalin p.s. even if is off-topic, the NLCs cloud picture was in the opposite direction of the Eclipse, so it was fun

Thanks Columbo, Poland gave me the opportunity to catch 2 solar transits of the ISS, both shortly after undocking of the Shuttle. First one is made in March and here it is. The moment is better in the March transit but unfortunately, sun was low in the sky and hence the distance to the ISS bigger so the size was smaller. Hopefully the next ISS transit will have same good timing!! Data is below Date: 07.03.2011 Subject: ISS transit 1 frame @ ISO 100, 1/1000s CFF 102/640 APO Herschel Prism Telextender Meade 2x, Canon EOS 550D Pixinsight, PS CS5 Author: Cătălin Fus

Thanks Pablito! Did you had also a transit in your area? It is usually on a very narrow band (5-6km)...you can check with calsky.com. Regards Cata

Many thanks to all of you who congratulated me!! Cata

Hi, this was photographed today at 07:58:34, local time, in the South of Krakow, hope you like it! There is field curvature because of the Powermate I have used to capture it. Details here : Date: 30.05.2011 Subject: ISS + Endeavour transit 1 frame @ ISO 100, 1/1600s GPU Optical 102/640 APO Herschel Prism Tv Powermate 2.5x, Canon EOS 550D PS CS5 Author: Cătălin Fus Regards Catalin

Hi again, as promised, I had the time today and made it to catch the ISS + Endeavour transit. You can find the picture on the front page of my website www.catalinfus.ro together with the details. Adam, please let me know if you want me to post this on other topic! Regards Cata

I should invite you to Romania !! We have there some of the darkest skies you can have around...unfortunately access is not so good and accommodation, the same situation. Measured sky darkness in the location of last year star-party was 21.6 magn/ sq arsec... also...the height of some locations help, being at almost 2000m you're above much of the worst atmosphere can throw at you. anyway, I'll keep in touch with Lukasz Kempinsky and I'll found out where you'll have the star-party arranged. Regards Cata

Ok, understood! many thanks for both invitations then :-). Adam, where is taking place this year's star party in Autumn? Regards Cata

Gregohr and Adam, are you talking about the same event? Zatom , between 29th September - 2 October? I'll have to check if this event is superimposed to some events in Germany that I have to attend because of my business, if not, I'll gladly come. It is possible that Robert put me on the list but I didn't knew it. I had a discussion with him about this star-party but as I have seen is 7h+ driving distance, it was not possible for me to come anyway and I choose to go in Bieszczady instead if weather allowed it.....it didn' :-( so this year , until now, it is 'bez-starparty'. Regards Cata

Hi Cata nice to see Romanian brother among us! I hope that Your problems with some of our forum-mates will be solved soon - if not just give us know and we'll fix it in Slovian style, trust me ! Hi Paweł, nice to meet you and I'm glad I have received many 'welcome' messages! Time will resolve this problem, one way or the other...we'll see :-)! BTW in Romania is quite strong community of occultation observers - do You know them? Well, if you give me some names, I can tell you if I know them or not. My friends from Bucharest are usually going out in a group of 8-10 people, maybe more. I do not know for sure if you are talking about them or not. About our national disadvantages - yes we are less open and trustful than in southern coutry but thanks to that we are better friends after longer period. Hopefully I'll see that :-)! So welcome on our forum and see You on one of our Zlot - Sky Party. I'll gladly come if I will know about it! You are talking about different meetings than those initiated by astropolis? Regards, Cata

Hi Janko, it is the second invitation in 24h, so I'll gladly come!! Just have to pack, get the family in the car and on the road we are!! :-)) Joking aside, I'll make a trip to Lukasz Kempinsky in about two weeks so I'll be around Warsaw if you want to talk during 10-12th of June. I'll gladly meet you :-). I have built a Classical Cassegrain , 250mm f/20 and we are meeting to 'evaluate it' . I hope also the problem will be solved but I have close to Zero hopes :-). Regards Cata

Adam, I will as I have no choice :-). Everyone who wants to see my work can access it on my personal webpage: www.catalinfus.ro On the front page is the transit I have photographed from Wielka Wies, near Krakow, and it was the last undocking of SS Discovery. Seeing was not good and ISS was small (27arsec) so the details are not impressive but the picture made it 3 days on spaceweather as first page picture and is featured on some French and Spanish magazines, NASA's solar picture on facebook etc. If the weather will be on my side, I'll gladly share pictures taken next Monday. Cata

Adam, I don't know what to say, my experience in the year I lived here is the one I have described above. I have lived in another culture where personal relations are important and people are more open....I think I should not expect here the same. Regarding Polish language, I'm trying hard but I have no private lessons and it is hard for me to speak it fluently. What I do not understand is why people that speak English do not want to speak with you in English :-)...I have met a lot of them, seriously. Someone from Krakow wrote me in private and I have let him know that Monday, 30th of May is a nice event at 7:58 AM, ISS transits the Sun and it seems it will be just in time to see undocking the Space Shuttle, so it will be a historical moment. I'm waiting to see if I'm going alone to see it / photograph it :-)...Hopefully not! Good luck to you too in your newest adventures, both of them :-)! Cata

Hi, thank you for your suggestion! I do not want to detail here, as I might be misinterpreted, but I have tried all my best in the communication with him, including friends. I'm sorry if he has problems, I know about that and wish him best of luck but this does not excuse his behavior, I'm sorry. Catalin

Hello everyone, I think you might find it very awkward for somebody who is not Polish to post here, not in Polish language also, but in English. I hope that you will read/translate this topic 'as it is' with no hidden meaning. First of all, my name is Catalin Fus and I'm a Romanian astronomer that lives in Krakow for over a year now. My website is www.catalinfus.ro and also I have a small business in refractor construction related to this hobby. After one year here, I find Poland astro community has good things and bad things, just like everywhere else. Unfortunately, the bad things are not the ones to be expected :-). The good things and which left me a very good impression is the fact that you have established here a nice program of star-parties that are attended by many people. I have been last year in September in Jodlow and I loved it very much. There were there many more people than in Romania at all meetings, and I loved it. The level of equipment also here is much better than in my home country and this is definitively a big plus. You have also nice astrophotos and , as far as I have tried to understand, the level of knowledge in any discussion around is very good. The bad things, that were not expected at all, were that during my stay here I have tried to contact in different ways the community and with two exceptions (Lukasz Kempinsky from Warsaw and Pawel Rojewski from Tchew), there were no people interested in knowing me. I doubt there are no astronomers in Krakow and that people are not organizing small expeditions for observing whenever necessary or possible. Worst part is yet to come, after trying to get some stuff done here in Poland, I have seen that most of the Polish people are trying to cheat as much as they can when they see your not from here and that happened also with someone who is an amateur astronomer , Robert Brygala (nickname Rodom?!)...who has my money sent to him for some aluminium bars from last year and , as we speak, I have nothing in return...just 500Zl lost. All in all, I hope things will change and I will have my bitter-sweet impression about the astro-community here turned to a good one. I have my mind open and I'm willing to know more people around here, maybe at the next star-party as the one in Bieszczady was not attended due to very bad weather. I'm looking forward for your responses, if there will be any. Kind regards from Krakow Catalin p.s. if there is anyone kind and wants to translate my post in Polish, I'll thank him/her in advance. No Google Translate :-)

Hi again, I didn't took and I will not take any opinion expressed by a person who doesn't like a product that is an affront to the quality of the product. It is a free world that we live in and it is full of choices in all matters and regards. (this is generally valid opinion and not directed to any opinions expressed in this topic!!!!!) I just explained some facts regarding the 102mm. Also the explanation regarding flatness of field is strictly related to that type of instrument. Of course it will be a total non'sense to compare a derived Petzval design , corrected for photography to a certain diameter if the image circle, with a doublet or a triplet of the same size/focal length for the curvature of the field. I gave the example with the 31mm Nagler just to say that curvature of field CAN be observed visually, that is all. My explanation for the Strehl Ratio was purely to clarify some things as we yet expect a laser to be invented around the 555nm - 560nm . If my first post made you feel like they have something to do with you personally Jurek, I'm truly sorry as this was not my intention. Regarding the fact that with a long focal length eyepiece you have no satisfactory image in a Petzval design derived system, with a flat image circle over 45mm usually, it is rather normal. If we imagine the curvature of the field as a function of the radius of the image circle, in the case of Petzval we will have almost a straight line but in case of most eyepieces we will have rather a concave or a convex type of curve and if we take this into account we will see at the eyepiece positive or negative curvature of the FOV (barrel distortion or pincushion). I will stop here and will make no more interventions because I do not want to be misinterpreted again. best regards Catalin

Hi, if I may, I would like to respond to two issues here..hopefully I understood the google translation in a good way. 1 - Strehl Ratio calculated for this lens is 0.975 in green light (532nm) but the lens is optimized for human peak sensitivity which is 555 - 560nm and the extrapolated test shows 0.992 which is what a person should see practically. 2 - lens has aberrations which are inherent to the design and this means astigmatism in the outer edge. It is absolutely normal and it is in every lens designed this way (triplet A - B - A). The design on the other hand is aplanatic which means that is free of coma (if coma appears in such a design is due to misalignment between member of the triplet). If I remember well we have looked through the 102mm with the Nagler 31mm and in that eyepiece you could see easily the curvature of field (the curvature of field is dependent on the focal length alone , the bigger the focal length, the flatter the field). Thank you! Catalin p.s. maybe someone is kind to translate this in Polish. Many thanks in advance!