For the last couple of weeks I have been doing lunar mosaics in an attempt to get a full lunar cycle. I am about half-way through and the moon has been relatively close to Jupiter the last few nights. As seen in the previous post, this has led to a few interesting transits, but it has also led to some of my best Jupiter images so far. The one posted above is by far the best I have done, and it is better than I expected I would be able to do given how low Jupiter is in the night sky. Couple that with the fact that this image was taken on the night of a full moon and while it sailed over the top of my neighbor's house, and you can see why I was shocked when I processed it.
Speaking of processing, all of the images so far have been processed from avi's. I use Registax to align and stack the best images (400 in the case of the image above), use wavelet processing to enhance the detail, and then Photoshop for color correction and resizing (in this case I increased the image size to 125% of the original).
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06/04/2007 | Keith Schlottman (keith att xanaduobservatory dott com)
You're getting some very nice planet images, thanks for sharing them and also the details on how you are processing!
Keith |
Sorry its been so long since I last posted. It's been a busy month during the day, and while I have been imaging at night, I just haven't had the time to get the images ready for display.
Recently, however, by serendipity (I wish I could say I planned it all out), I caught the Great Red Spot on Jupiter as well as a transit of Europa. I have several images of both the shadow and Europa itself egressing from the planet. I hope to have some time this weekend to turn it into an animated gif (which would also show the planet rotation).
Jupiter is rather low in the sky for northern hemisphere observers and so when trying to image the planet atmospheric turbulence is a problem. While this image is probably the best that I can expect (at least until 2010 or I get a bigger telescope), the amateur astronomers in Australia have been taking some beautifully detailed shots.
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Another interesting aspect when observing Saturn are its moons. The above image shows six of the moons of Saturn. It is slightly doctored in that normally to image the moons, Saturn itself is overexposed. Using Photoshop, I took a normal exposure of Saturn taken the same night (no more than 5-10 minutes before) and put it in place of the overexposed Saturn. It makes for a nice family portrait of Saturn.
Saturn has over 30 moons and moonlets orbiting it, so the above is only a portrait of the shining stars of Saturn's family. Of course, Iapetus could also be considered a shining star (its actually brighter than Enceladus and Mimas), but it is shy. It has a much larger orbit and just happened to be out of the field of view when this image was taken back in March.
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All spring Saturn has been placed well for observing in the northern hemisphere. I have taken several images (one of the best ones is shown above) of the ringed planet using the webcam. In fact, much of my imaging so far has been of Saturn (Venus and the Moon run a close second). It is a great subject because it is relatively bright (typically around magnitude 0.0 or better), it has lots of interesting features (the rings, banding structure, and occasionally spots), and it is high in the night sky (the least amount of atmosphere and turbulence to contend with).
Ralf Vandebergh wrote an interesting article in the May 2007 Sky and Telescope describing how to detect spots on Saturn. While I haven't had the best luck finding any spots, he has reported his results here.
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Welcome to the suburban Chicago skies. I've decided to explore the universe from my backyard (and the occasional dark site) and invite you to come along on my journey. We will be sailing the skies with an 8" Meade LX200GPS and an attached Philips SPC900N Webcam.
To start our journey, I have attached the above image showing the 2-day old moon. It was taken on the 21st of April and is a mosaic of 12 images. I should have a gallery open in the next few days filled with some of the images I have taken over the last couple of months.
Sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
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05/15/2007 | WadeVC (Stars Above) (WadeVC att comcast dott net)
Nice lunar photo! we look forward to seeing more as they are posted!
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