Solar System Archives - Page 10 of 24

July 25, 2021July 25, 2021

7/24/2021 The Moon

Last night at the River Ridge Observatory, I had first light with my new Starizona SCT Corrector IV and Baader Large SCT Clicklock Visual Back on my 11″ SCT (Elf). My first attempted object was the Crescent Nebula (with a dual narrowband filter) but the guiding was atrocious. Even PHD2 agreed. So I moved to the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula and the guiding was much better. I captured two hours of that but later found that the stars were slightly out of focus despite the Bahtinov mask. So, about 3AM I took out the dual narrowband, oriented the camera, got a new focus and shot the Moon. This is actually a composite of three shots made from 500 frames of video each 3ms long at unity gain. The Moon wouldn’t quite fit in the frame so three so that each mostly overlapped the one next to it.

Click on the image for a larger view.

March 21, 2021March 21, 2021

3/20/2021 Lunar Occultations

I was at the River Ridge Observatory under a first quarter Moon. I had one rig shooting with a narrowband filter oblivious to the moonshine. I had a second rig set up for my DSLR but what to shoot with that bright of a Moon in the way?

Occultations! Serendipitously, I found that the leading dark edge of the Moon would occult, or pass in front of, two fairly bright stars at 9:05 PM just 30 minutes away. I set the remote to take continuous one second images starting at about 9:02 and let it run for two or three minutes 9:05 to be safe. I got a total of about six minutes of single one second shots.

I used Lightroom to process and Photoshop to make a video and here is the result at ten frames or ten seconds per second. You can see the Moon creep up on and blot out the two stars almost at the same time.

December 6, 2020December 16, 2020

12/4/2020 Jupiter and Saturn Conjunction

You’ve heard about the coming conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Here is my first picture of it, taken Friday evening (12/4). I used my C11 with Hyperstar and ASI 294MC Pro camera. This is a single image one second long. The field of view is about 2 degrees by 1.2. At this scale there are no details to speak of but you see the moons of Jupiter in the lower right pointing at the oval of Saturn in the upper left. As they get closer, I’ll be able to go to a smaller scale and see more details.