The Sun on 12/12/12

At this time of the year, the sun is in the trees from my observation site even when it is highest in the sky. You can see the tree limb shadows in these shots.  The first is a processed stack of 200 of the best frames from a 1117-frame capture (640x480).  Tree limbs cause stacking and alignment problems (the linear artifacts in this image)

This next image is a processed single shot from a 1000 frame AVI. The sun was deeper in the trees in this shot and  Registax could not produce a coherent stack.  There were some nice prominences and filaments visible.  Images with PST, SolarMax II and Microsoft Lifecam,  This image is a crop from an original image of 640x480 pixels.

A Jupiter Gallery--December 5, 2012

Jupiter is just a day or two past opposition and the closest it will be to earth in 27 years.  This gallery of images was taken with an ETX 125 and Microsoft LifeCam.  Images were stacked and processed in Registax 6 with some minor tweaks in Windows.  Thanks to Joe Rome of QCUIAG for color balancing the first image--I will try to do as good a job with the other at some point!

Jupiter and the Galilean Moons

The King of the Planets

One More for Luck!

This overexposed pic shows 3 of the Galilean satellites

The last image is overexposed to show 3 of the Galilean Moons.  Above Jupiter in the image is Callisto. Below the planet is the fainter Ganymede and to the left is Io.  Europa is further out, beyond Io as is outside the field of this image.