Planetary
Mars on March 15
by Vern on Mar.16, 2010, under Astronomy, Planetary
Good conditions now and then for planetary imaging last evening. Image below from 10:22 pm MDT. Mars is now 10.6 arc sec across to our view. Image presentation is direct view, north up and east to the left more or less. Central meridian at 61 degrees. Mare Acidalium is the dark patch to lower right from the north polar cap. Solis Lacus (the eye of mars) just below center of the disk.
Clear sky, 2 mph wind, transparency very good, temperature 40 deg. F, 58% humidity, turbulence varied but probably around 6/10 for this set.
Equipment used was Celestron Nexstar 11 scope, LRGB filters, Televue 2.5X Powermate, and DMK 21AU04.AS camera. Recorded luminance channel for 100 sec at 60fps, red for 100 sec at 30 fps, blue and green channel for 70 sec at 30 fps.
Aligned and stacked with Registax5. Photoshop’s ’smart’ sharpen filter used this time. It seemed to much produce less noise and slightly better detail than using Registax wavelets. Image enlarged 1.5X.
Mars on Feb 16 evening
by Vern on Feb.17, 2010, under Astronomy, Planetary
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 on Feb 16
by Vern on Feb.16, 2010, under Astronomy, Planetary
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 Feb. 16
by Vern on Feb.16, 2010, under Astronomy, Planetary
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.
