Another Arizona Trip

My father came to visit in March from Australia, and I had the opportunity to take him to Arizona for a one-week tour. We explored the Grand Canyon, Phoenix, Sedona, old Route 66 and various points in between. A highlight was spending an evening at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. We took in several lectures which were very interesting. Some were entry-level astronomy "sky at night" fare, but others were more focused on the evolving discoveries connected with Pluto - from it's initial discovery to the recently acquired images and knowledge provided by the New Horizons spacecraft and its team of scientists. Not still a planet??? C'mon now - let it back into the club. It behaves just like one, from a tectonic perspective alone!

We managed to get a view through the 24" Clark Refractor (pictured below) of Jupiter, after lining up for about an hour in the cold. It was simply stunning! The seeing was very good that night, and we could see a clear image of the Great Red Spot, the planet's wispy cloud bands with intricate detail and the four Galilean moons. I could even see detail within the GRS itself, different shades of red. It's the best view of Jupiter I have ever seen, and dad was pretty much blown away by it as well. I'll drag my 12" Lightbridge to check out Jupiter again soon, but I know it won't be the same!

We also had the chance to visit the impact crater near Winslow. The views of the crater from the observation decks were terrific, and they have a splinter chunk of the asteroid/meteor that caused the impact on display to touch and examine more closely. It felt like pure iron or metal, and gave you an eerie sense of the damage a really large asteroid of this nature could cause if it impacted our planet. Well worth a visit if you're up that way!

Hopefully I'll have some more astro-images to share soon as the warm, spring nights take hold here in Texas.

January 2012 Jupiter & Moon Appulse (Closer!)

Same event but taken close to when Jupiter and the Moon were at their apparent closest (around 10:00 PM US CT). This image was taken though an 80mm ED Refractor - very cool to have both of these objects in the same FOV!!!

You can see the apparent size of Jupiter compared to the Moon here quite clearly!

Moon & Jupiter Conjunction, November 1st, 2012

Beautiful sight!

How Many Moons Do You See?

This composite image was taken on December 6, 2011. Jupiter was rather close to the moon, and the skies were gorgeously crisp and clear.  The main image captures how visually stunning the sight was. At inset is a 100% crop of Jupiter and its four largest moons from one of the images used to put this composite together!

This photo is a composite of two images. Both images were shot at the same focal length/zoom range of 135mm, using a Sigma 70-200 F2.8 HSM lens:

• Image 1: 1/500 second shot at F8 to capture a nice looking Moon.
• Image 2: 1/1.5 second shot at F2.8 to capture Jupiter’s brilliance.

The two images were merged and the background was evened out using fill brush. The inset of Jupiter and its four larger moons is a 100% crop of the second image. At 135mm zoom with a stable tripod, that’s not half bad!  Jupiter itself is very bright, so shooting at 1/1.5 seconds at F2.8 was used to bring out the four larger satellites around it. This overexposed the planet but brought the moons out nicely.

Spending Some Visual Downtime!

Oh, the stress levels have been high lately! Work, family stuff, life. I spent an hour out in the front garden unwinding with my 6" Dobsonian tonight. It's really been a long time since I have enjoyed visual astronomy. With a big near-full moon out, there wasn't too much to see. I blinded myself (no Moon filter!) with the Moon for a good while, touring the full landscape using a 10mm Radian. Even though I did not collimate the scope (and haven't done for a year or so) I still got great, crisp views. I then moved onto Jupiter, which again I had not observed visually in over a year. Despite the unsteady seeing conditions, I got a nice, sharp view. Its two cloud bounds looked great, and all four of the larger moons could be seen. It really was an enjoyable hour. I need to get my poor 12" Lightbridge sometime later this month. I haven't had it out this year at all - too much astrophotography. Maybe stepping away from astrophotography for a while will do me some good.

An interesting attempt at Jupiter

This was just an experiment but it turned out be pretty interesting! I manually moved my refractor (which I mounted on a pretty cheap camera tripod, which doesn't allow for fine adjustments at all) over to Jupiter. Once centered, I used the live view on the D7000 to zoom way in on Jupiter. I focused the scope until the moons looked pretty sharp, and then took several shots. The above shot is the best result. I don't think it's too bad, really. This live view and zoom feature is really going to have an impact on the quality of my astro snaps moving forward...

Image Details:

• Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000
• Imaging Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval
• ISO: 400
• Shutter Speed: 1/8 second

Jupiter and Europa

Here's a shot from tonight. Seeing was supposed to be 5/5 according to Skyclock, but my raw .AVI were bouncing around like crazy. Below is the best shot of the night. The GRS stands our clearly, as does what I think is GRS junior literally right next to it. Europa is the small splodge at lower left.

• Meade LX200 8" @ F12
• Philips SPC900NC (2X barlowed)
  
• Captured in K3CCDTools
• 832 Frames
  
• 15FPS
• 1/33 Exposure
• Stacked in Registax
• Mild contrast enhancement in GIMP
  

More Imaging Fun with Jupiter

Tonight, the seeing was better than last night. Below are a couple of images I took while messing with different K3CCDTools settings...

















Below is my attempt to try and capture Jupiter with Io and Ganymede (from left to right). When I adjusted the settings, although the moons came out okay, the planet came out rather light/bright. I'll keep experimenting with it...

Jupiter and Io

I was messing around with my LX200 tonight and decided to shoot Jupiter. Seeing was rated by the Skyclock as 4/5, but I still think it was only at a 3 or so. I couldn't get a very stable image at all. Anyway, below is my best shot using my SPC900NC camera. Resolution is so-so. One day I'll get a decent lunar/planetary imager to try out.

















I am not too sure what the dark patch near the Great Red Spot, probably NOT a comet impact!! Still, it's interesting. Also, it's interesting to note how fast the Great Red Spot itself can move around the planet. It seemed to emerge from one side at about 7:30PM local, then in the space of an hour made it's way half-way across the surface. Unreal!

Jupiter Last Night

Last night, I took the kids out front with their 6" Dob and we observed Jupiter for a while. They have become very good at lining up objects using the red dot finder scope now. My daughter placed Jupiter right into the center of the eyepiece and it was perfectly focused. Seeing was about 4/5 - very steady! It looked great last night, and Callisto's shadow could clearly be seen on the surface of the gas giant itself. I explained to the kids what they were seeing. I think my oldest got it, but my youngest struggled with the concept.

This weekend will be brilliant. I am spending two nights with an old work colleague and his friend at the Canyon of the Eagles near Burnet, Texas. I'm taking both my LX200 and Lightbridge, and hope to be up for most of each night shooiting objects and getting a start on my hunt for Caldwell Catalogue objects. I'll hopefully have some images to share next week...

Shooting Jupiter Again

It's been donkey's years since I have imaged Jupiter using a webcam and my LX200. That was actually a problem for me tonight as I had to relearn what I had learned 18 months ago! Adjust all the settings, get focus, set the right fps etc. etc. Talk about annoying...

Anyway, the shot below is my best for the night. Seeing conditions were about 2/5 tonight so I as pushing it. I need to think about getting a better resolution camera (DMK series or similar) but this will do for now).

Not sure what the dark spot is at near center. The reddish splodge at top right is one of its moons, Io.

Image details:

• Meade LX200 8" SCT @ F12.6
• Philips SPC900NC Webcam
• 2170 frames
• 15 frames per second
• Captured in K3CCDTools
• Stacked in Registax
  

Oh, Jovian Moons - Where Art Thou?

Tonight, Jupiter's main four moons move either directly behind or directly in front of Jupiter from our perspective, leaving the visual image of the gas giant unusually alone. Ganymede and Europa move in front of the planet, whereas Io and Callisto will move behind it, all at around the same time. It's rather rare for such an event to occur, about 12 or so times per century!

Anyway, I used my Orion 6" Dob to check it out, starting at about 10PM or so tonight. No real photos, but I can show you how it appeared through my scope using captured real-time apparent views from Calsky. Seeing conditions were actually pretty good, about 4/5.

10:25PM US CST (03:25 UTC)









Ganymede - Europa - Jupiter - Io

11:05PM US CST (04:05 UTC)









Ganymede - Jupiter

11:38 US CST (04:38 UTC)









Ganymede - Jupiter

(Bye Ganymede!!!!)

00:07 US CST (05:07 UTC)









Just Jupiter!

This was quite a neat sight, albeit rather odd. To see Jupiter alone with a dark, lonely background and no moons surrounding it took some getting used to! I studied it for about 35 minutes, watching Europa's and Ganymede's shadows slowly make their way across the gas giant's disc. I fancied that I could still see the scar left behind by the comet/asteroid when impacting it several weeks ago. Not 100% sure about that, though.

Anyway, a great event to observe and I am glad I stayed up for it. Luckily I have no meetings at work tomorrow so can get away with some head-down time ;-)

The Moon Meets Jupiter

A nice sight tonight: The Moon and Jupiter, while a fair distance from each other, sat level with each other in the night sky tonight. I took a quick snap and the below is the image...













Okay, a little bit of cheating here. It was hard to get a sharp, somewhat detailed moon while also being able to get the apparent brightness of Jupiter in the same shot. So, I took two shots (one with the Moon nice and sharp but not too bright, and the other with the moon overly bright but Jupiter at about the same apparent magnitude as the naked eye view). I merged them using layering in GIMP, and was able to reproduce almost exactly as they both appeared in the sky tonight. :-)

Capturing a Jovian Moon

As well as the M11 photo that I took last night, I tried to image Jupiter in a way that I hadn't done before - I wanted to capture one or more of its moons as well as the planet itself. It wasn't the best of nights to try it, as even though the SkyClock indicated 3/5 seeing, I thought it was more like 2/5. Anyway, below is my shot of Jupiter which did happen to capture Ganymede! I had to turn up the gain on the camera control software to capture Ganymede as well as Jupiter, which had the adverse effect of overexposing Jupiter itself. Still, there's some "okay" detail on the giant planet itself, and Ganymede is quite prominent in the shot.

1,788 frames stacked in Registax.
Philips SPC900NC with 2X Barlow
Wavelets stretched in Registax

Click image for full size

Jupiter

Sky conditions were excellent last night! No clouds, 4/5 transparency and 4/5 seeing. Jupiter was extremely stable so I took some .AVIs of it using the Philips SPC900NC webcam with my LX200. The photo to the left is the best image after post-processing.

The image below shows the difference between the final stacked image, and the image after it had its layers stretched in Registax. It really pays to spend the time messing with these little filters and settings to draw out as much detail as possible in the data available in your stacked image.

Settings:
Image captured using K3CCDTools, processed in Registax
15 frames per second
Best 2,217 frames from 3,370 frames
Mild layer adjustment in Registax

Quick Shot of Jupiter

Not brilliant, but not too shabby either.

This Jupiter shot was taken through my 6" Dobsonian telescope, with a barlowed Televue Radian 10mm and hand-held digital point-and-shoot (Fuji Finepix A800 8.3 Megapixel).

Conditions were pretty ordinary, lots of air movement. I took about a dozen shots just for fun and this one came out the best. I slightly modified the image in Photoshop through image sharpening and curve adjustment. It's decent, you can see a few cloud bands anyway! There's a fair bit of noise in the image and I tried to remove it using Noiseware but the difference wasn't that noticeable.

Jovian Transit - Io

Last night I managed to get away from the craziness of my family (at least for 20 minutes) and observe the transit of Io across Jupiter. It was quite a sight. Again, seeing conditions were very nice (4/5). The Great Red Spot was dead center, and I could clearly see both Io left of the planet (really, it was right of the planet due to my scope flipping the image) and its well-defined black shadow on Jupiter's surface. The CalSky representation below is a very accurate depiction of what it looked like.

Jupiter Tonight

No photo, sadly. Don't have the right gear. But if there was one night to take a picture of Jupiter from Austin this entire year, this might be the night. Seeing is about 4/5, which is a bit rare for Austin. Anyway, I took the XT6 Dobsonian out to check it out from the front garden and it was just amazing. The Great Red Spot was perfectly clear, in center just above the equatorial cloud bands. And talk about cloud bands! I lost count, and they were all swirly and wispy. Without a doubt the best view of Jupiter ever for me. I thought about dragging out the LX200 but I couldn't be bothered - too hot and muggy and setting that thing up can be a bit of a workout.

I also got to find M13 (globular in Hercules) from the front yard which was prominent, and had some minor detail (could see star pin pricks on the outer rim of the cluster). As they would say here in Texas though, "It Ain't No Omega Centauri!". Bummer!