Astronomy Archives - Page 67 of 75

June 8, 2016December 16, 2020

Jupiter & Hand Controller Wednesday night

The seeing looked good for Wednesday and I hadn’t tried to image since Memorial Day weekend and I had a new hand controller I was itching to try so I set up scope in the backyard and shot Jupiter. The seeing wasn’t as good as I hoped, it never is, but I managed to get this shot. The smudge in the upper right is Callisto which will be transiting Jupiter shortly. Despite the seeing I was able to get some detail. Mars and Saturn will be up later but I can’t see them from my backyard so they can wait. Maybe Friday.

Regarding the hand controller, some of you may remember my scope has had pointing problems for a while. After an alignment it would get way off. It would usually track okay but goto sucked when it acted up. I thought maybe if I updated the firmware that would help. I contacted Celestron for their opinion because they are the experts. The guy I talked to thought otherwise and felt I might need to send the mount in. “What do they know?” I thought. I bought the cables and connectors needed to update the firmware and was able to do that and it seemed to help a lot. But then at that last imaging session it started all over. So I threw the dice and gambled $100 that it was still the controller and bought a new one. Tonight I set up, I couldn’t see Polaris so I got it level and lined the mount up with where the compass in my phone said north was and entered the time and location and did a one point solar system alignment. Jupiter. Even with the lazy alignment it slewed to within a half a degree of the target. I centered and aligned and it tracked really well for the next hour till I turned it off. Drift shows up really well when imaging at f/10. Yay!

May 22, 2016December 16, 2020

Jupiter, Mars, & Saturn 5/21/2016

I went back to the River Ridge Observatory Saturday night to work on planets again. I had noticed some dust motes on my color camera that I’ve not been able to clean yet so I switched to my monochrome camera. It has a higher resolution. I started with Jupiter of course, and while the contrast is a little low look at these details! The Great Red Spot is at about 8 oclock near the edge and see the turbulence in the South Equatorial Belt?

Mars was next and man it is bright! I didn’t wait until it or especially Saturn in its best position because that would be about 1 AM or later. I’ve flipped and rotated Mars to account for the diagonal, North is up. On the left is Syrtis Major Planitia. The light area at about 1 o’clock is Olympus Mons (tallest volcano in the solar system). Check this map (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/atlas/).

Finally, Saturn. No self respecting photographer would have shot Saturn this low in the sky but I did anyway. It sharpened up pretty well.

May 21, 2016December 16, 2020

Jupiter and Mars 5/20/2016

It was with high hopes that I went to the River Ridge Observatory Friday night. I knew the full Moon meant I would likely be alone but the Clear Sky Clock indicated that the seeing (a measure of air steadiness and a requirement for planetary photography) would be good. Though mostly cloudy when I left the house at 8, I felt sure it clear up. It never really quite did. The seeing was not as good as I hoped and the broken clouds were continuously revealing and then obscuring the planets and the Moon. I finally gave up around 11:30 when an unbroken layer of clouds hid the Moon and Mars and somewhere Saturn. However, my main goal was accomplished – my first picture of Mars of this opposition. Mars will rapidly improve over the next few days then as rapidly recede as the Earth swings close by and then keeps going. I was also treated to a singing contest between Eastern Whip-poor-wills and Chuck-will’s-widows and a Yellow-breasted Chat who couldn’t sleep.