Friday night there was a clear sky and I was able to spend a couple hours observing and imaging a great red spot (GRS) transit of the planet Jupiter.

I was not feeling well and I had told myself if there were any issues with the equipment it was going to be an observing only night. Luckily everything worked out OK.

The moon was nearly full so I knew I would not have much luck with deep sky objects but I did have a quick look at M42 in Orion (still one of my favorites). It looked nice but a little washed out. The next target was the planet Uranus. I was not expecting to be able to see it very well and was surprised when it the blue/green disk appeared in the eyepiece.

At around 7:45 PM I moved to Jupiter and set up the Celestron NexImage Camera. Seeing was actually OK early on and I was quickly able to get decent focus. I took a couple of quick test shots and things looked pretty good.

Over the next hour or so I took a series of 1 minute video captures of Jupiter to record the transit of the Great Red Spot across the planets surface. The seeing declined considerably after 8:30 or so and the wind picked up. The images are still OK but the earlier images have a bit more detail. Still pretty neat seeing the disturbance in the southern equatorial band caused by the GRS.

The GRS is noted on the flickr page for this image which can be found here.

As the wind picked up and seeing declined I decided to take a couple quick shots of the moon. I have not taken the time to identify the features yet, but the pictures turned out nice.

Just after 10 PM I decided to call it a night. A great observing and imaging session, hopefully it will not be such a long wait for the next one.

First I combined the image using Maxim DL Essentials. I tried to stack the .FIT images in Registax but the software would not recognize the color. If I tried to force it to be a color image the results were either just a black background or a very dim green ball.

50 x 0.009 exposures with the Orion Starshoot DSI II combined using Maxim DL Essentials

The same image after adjusting the Wavelet settings in Registax 5.1

I did a bit of searching around the web and found several very helpful Registax Tutorials and I listed a couple of them that I found really helpful at the end of this post. I do not completely understand what these wavelet settings do, but adjusting them did make a great deal of difference in the amount of detail visible. This is one of my best shots yet! I am also going to revisit some of my other planet shots and reprocess to see what I can get from them.

I think I could probably bring out some more detail if I had more data. Next time I will try the web cam and take AVIs to stack.

These Registax tutorials were very helpful:

http://www.russsscope.net/staxtutorial.htm

http://www.astrotarp.com/Registax_basic_tutorial.html

I knew the moon was going to be fairly bright, but I wanted to have a look at and maybe try to get an image or two of Jupiter. It was nice and clear, a bit warm, and very humid.

I recently picked up a 16mm Nagler on Astromart and was looking forward to giving it a try in the SV80BV – WOW! This will probably end up being my main eyepiece for this scope. Nice crisp views, sharp focus, just very nice. Since it is a 1.25″ eyepiece I stuck with all 1.25″ eyepieces so I did not have to keep switching out the 2″-1.25″ adapter.

The notes in my log are not as I usually do them – Object: Description of what I see. This time they are a bit more free form, I guess I was just not feeling very structured during this session.

I tried to check out several Messier objects before moon rise, but even with the moon over the horizon the bright light from it still made a wash of the night sky. I did get a view or M27, M57, M13, and M15 but because of the bright moon light I was not able to see very much detail for any of these. M13 was very faint and I was not able to resolve and individual stars with either the 16mm or 7mm eyepieces. M27 looked like a faint bubble and showed no detail.

Jupiter was just awesome! Very clear and crisp in the 16mm and 7mm. Even very nice and sharp in the 4mm Radian. Lots of detail in the 4mm – one dark band and at least two visible lighter bands. The views through the eyepiece were just spectacular! The four Galilean moons of Jupiter were very bright and easy to spot. I could keep all of them in the FOV of the 16mm and 7mm eyepieces. (I made a rough sketch of their position in my log, I might scan it later)

I hooked up the Orion DSI II camera to the Televue 2x Powermate and took 100 exposures at 0.04 second and 100 exposures at 0.05 second. I was a bit out of focus on the second set so they are pretty much trash, but after stacking the 100/0.04 seconds I ended up with my best Jupiter image yet.

I ended the night with a look at M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Even with the bright moon the galactic center was easy to find and looked very nice in the 16mm. With a darker sky I think this object will end up looking amazing with this eyepiece through this scope.

Alignment Stars: Arcturus and Vega
Calibration Star: Enif

From my observing notes:

I started out observing Messier 11. This open cluster looked great in the C6 with the 22mm Panoptic. Very easy to see individual stars in the tight cluster. One bright yellow star just off center of the cluster.

Then I turned to Messier 39, another open cluster. This cluster filled the 25mm Plossl eye piece in the AT66 also looked good with the 22mm in the C6. Because of the size I actually liked the wider field of view the 66 gave better.

I viewed several other open cluster – M18, M22, M23, M28, M26, and NGC6633. When observing Messier 28 (M28) I was not able to resolve individual stars even with the 9mm, it just appear to be a faint cloud. I think the humid air and the fair amount of light pollution to the south was probably the reason for the less than spectacular views in the 9mm. NGC6633 was another cluster that really looked great in the AT66 with the 25mm Plossl, the cluster just filled the field of view.

Jupiter was easy to spot. The dark northern gas band was very easy to resolve with the 22mm and 9mm in the C6 (the southern band is missing) and the 4 Galilean moons were clearly visible in all eye pieces and all scopes. The 22mm Panoptic gave me the best views, the seeing was just not good enough for the magnification of the 9mm. Easy to see the 4 moons in the AT66, but no detail on the planet. I observed Jupiter on into sunrise, it was still easily visible in the scope even as the sun began to peek over the horizon.

When the star Capella rose to the north east I started searching the north east for Comet 2009/R1 (McNaught) with binoculars. I was not able to successfully locate the comet with my binoculars.

Very heavy morning dew ended the viewing, I was pretty surprised that I did not have more problems with dew. There was a light dew on the scope but the corrector remained fairly clear with just the dew shield. I am looking forward to getting my dew heater so that my troubles with dew will become a thing of the past.

I think Jupiter would have been visible even in full sun light.

A 3 minute capture of 900 frames through a 3x barlow.

Jupiter NexImage/3x Barlow 3 minutes - 900 frames stacked

The image is not that great, but I hope to get a few more tries at it over the next month.

Even though there are a few clouds, still a very nice end of the year view of Venus, the Crescent Moon, Mercury, and Jupiter

Venus and the Crescent Moon - 12/31/2008

Venus, the Crescent Moon, and a few passing clouds.

Mercury and Jupiter - 12/31/2008

Have a Happy New Year!!!

Jupiter and Mars are very close together in the southwest and I was able to easily get them both in the 105mm’s field of view.  Both planets disappeared quickly over the horizon.

Jupiter and Mars - 5:44 PM EST - 105mm ISO1600 1/10 f2.8

The Moon and Venus are more south-southwest and higher in the sky with a bit more space between them. I was not able to get a good shot of them both with 105mm. The 50mm picked them up quite nice.

Venus and the Moon - 5:53 PM EST - 50mm 1/50 ISO800 f2.8

These are a bit hurried, but hopefully tomorrow night will be clear and I will have a little more time. The Moon and Venus are suppose to meet up in the sky for a conjunction tomorrow night and Mercury and Jupiter should be nearly side by side.

Can’t wait to piggy back the 105 on the scope!

My wonderful wife also got me the t-connector and t-ring to be able to do prime focus photography through my C8.  I am looking forward to a good clear sky and some time to try that out!

Moon, Venus, Jupiter Conjunction

Moon, Venus, Jupiter Conjunction

It was really a cool site to see. I hope you were able to get out and see it.

Moon, Venus, and Jupiter

Look carefully in the upper right corner of the full size pictures and you should be able make out Jupiter, even if it is really faint.

Moon, Venus, and Jupiter

Moon, Venus, and Jupiter

That’s all for tonight. I have a few more pictures that turned out pretty good so I will post them when I can.

I actually took over 180 pictures between 4:00 and 6:00 PM. These are just three of those that I put together quickly.

The Moon and Venus - Just after 4:00 PM EST

You can’t see Jupiter in the picture above but it is there.

Moon, Venus, and Jupiter - Just after 4:30 PM EST

Moon, Venus, Jupiter after dark - About 5:45 PM

Very cool!

The clouds started moving in just after 6:00 PM and the temperature started falling pretty quickly so I called it an early night.