Sky this Week

Vern — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:05:24 +0000

Below of image of Jupiter at 10:43 pm MDT. Clear skies, good transparency, turbulence maybe a bit better than 6/10, temperature in the mid-50s, no mosquitoes! Awesome night.
Image taken with Celestron Nextar11, LRGB filters, 2.5X Televue Powermate, and DMK21AU04.AS video camera. 30 sec each channel at 30fps, 1/92 sec shutter, gain adjusted to maintain 95% histogram. Aligned and stacked with Registax5, enhanced with Photoshop CS4, enlarged 1.5X. Location Louisville, CO.

Mars on March 15

Vern — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:21:42 +0000

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

Vern — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:27:08 +0000

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.

Sky this Week for Feb. 14 to 20, 2010

Vern — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:46:18 +0000

Saturn on Feb 16

Vern — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:28:07 +0000

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

Vern — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:23:13 +0000

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.

Mars on Feb 15

Vern — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:08:26 +0000

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.

Mars on Thursday Feb 12

Vern — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:45:22 +0000

Another image of Mars from last evening just before 11 pm. Image oriented north up, east to the left more or less. Mare Acidalium is the dark albedo feature visible just below and slightly left of north polar cap. Sinus Merdiani is the roundish dark area just below center and slightly right or west. Mare Sabaeus is the dark line extending from Sabaeus to the southwest. Arabia is the large lighter region west of center.

Mostly cloudy here last night but got some occasional gaps in them so I could capture mars images. Turbulence was about 5/10 or maybe slightly better. However thin haze always present with varying transparency from fair to poor. I was able to compensate somewhat by changing gain on camera while recording. However I had to drop Registax quality to 85% to get even a couple hundred frames. Temp 28F, 3-5 mph wind, location Louisville. Usual setup, Celstron Nexstar11, 2.5X Powermate, DMK21AU04.AS video camera, and LRGB filters.

Comet 29P Schwassmann-Wachmann on Feb 10

Vern — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:03:52 +0000

Comet 29P Schwassmann-Wachmann on Feb. 10 at 10:50 MST.

Equipment used Celestron Nexstar11, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, StellacamII video camera. Alligned, dark subtracted, and aligned with Registax5. Photoshop used to crop, brighten, and create animation. Sky was partly cloudy, transparency was good, not great. Turbulence between 5 and 6/10, no wind, location Louisville.

Saturn on Thur. Feb 11

Vern — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:56:33 +0000

Saturn just after midnight Thursday morning.

Celestron Nexstar 11, Televue 2.5X Powermate, DMK 21AU04.AS, LRGB filters, same for saturn except no Powermate.
Sky was partly cloudy, transparency was good, not great. Turbulence slightly better than Tues, between 5 and 6/10. Temperature around 26 deg. F, 1-2 mph wind, location Louisville.