Sky this Week

Mars on Feb 16 at 10:40 pm MST. Clear, very good transparenty and quite steady skies again tonight probably around 6/10, temp.30 deg. F. Celestron Nexstar11, 2.5X Powermate, DMK21AU04.AS, LRGB filters. Shot luminance image at 60 fps for 100 sec, and then 90 sec for RGB channels. Aligned and stacked with Registax5, channels merged and enhanced with Photoshop CS4.

Saturn at 12:42 am this morning.

Celestron Nexstar11, 2.5X Powermate, DMK21AU04.AS camera, LRGB filters, 3 minuites at 15 fps for luminance and 3 minuates at 7.5 fps for RGB layers. Turbulence between 6 and 7/10, transparency very good, no wind, 18 deg.F.

Mars at 12:06 am this morning. Best of the evening. Images taken from about 10-11 pm were dismal in comparison, seeing apparently deteriorated for a while and then improved.

Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, 2.5X Powermate, DMK21AU04.AS camera, 60fps luminance channel, 30 fps RGB channels, aligned and stacked with Registax5. Transparency very good, no wind, 18 deg. F. Seeing was about 6 based on the airy disk when I rechecked collimation for this set.

Here is Mars from shortly after 9 pm this evening. Good conditions — most clear, turbulence somewhere between 6 and 7, very good transparency, 26 deg.F., 2-3 mph wind

Usual set up, Celestron Nexstar11, Televue 2.5X Powermate, DMK21AU04.AS camera, LRGB filters, 30fps, 1/30 sec.
Aligned and stacked with Registax5, Channels combined with Photoshop CS4.