Vern's Weblog » Planetary

Saturn on Feb 15

Vern — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:37:56 +0000

Saturn will be at opposition on Feb 24 so now is a good time to photograph the ringed planet. Image below taken last night just after 11 pm.

Sky was clear, turbulence varied between 5 and 6/10, transparency was fair (inversion), temperature around 24°F, location was Gary’s observatory near Niwot, CO using Pete’s scope, a Celestron C11, F6.3 focal reducer, Televue 2.5X Powermate, and DMK 21AF04.AS video camera 1/30 sec shutter, 30fps.

Mars on Dec 16, 2007

Vern — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:01:15 +0000

Image below of Mars from last night around 11pm, MST. Clear, transparent sky, 22°F , 2-3 mph wind, but turbulence not good, maybe 4/10 — too much movement to even check collimation. Image came out far better than I expected. Celestron Nexstar11 telescope at cassegrain focus, Phillips Toucam 840K, 20 fps, 3/4 gain, 100% brightness, and 1/500 sec shutter. Approx 4000 frames aligned, stacked, histogram adjusted, and wavelet filtered with Registax4. Resized 150%. North is approximately up, east to the left in the image. The central meridian should be around 19 degrees, so that is Mare Acidium near the top, Mare Erythreum is the dark feature extending from 9 o’clock on the left. Sinus Sabeus extends from about middisk to the 5 o’clock position.

Mars on Oct 25

Vern — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:14:54 +0000

Since I was up taking images of 17P Holmes, I captured Mars as well just before shutting down. According to the S&T Mars Profiler, that should be Mare Cimmerium extending from the left to about midway across and then Mare Sirenum extending onward to the lower right.

Image taken with Celestron Nexstar 11 telescope, Televue 2.5X Powermate, and Phillips Toucam 840K webcam. Location was from Louisville, CO. Sky was clear, no wind, temperature 48°F, very good transparency, and turbulence 7/10.