Jupiter Comparison--125 MAK vs 14 inch ACF

Given how good the conditions were yesterday, I decided to fire up the 14 inch with the DS2.3+ so I could compare Jupiter images from the 125 MAK and the 14.

Unfortunately, the conditions were nowhere near as good as yesterday. It was very hard to achieve focus in the "choppy" atmosphere and the final image, even with processing, is very much inferior to the MAK image.  Here's the comparison:

Jupiter with 14 inch ACF--Poor Seeing

Jupiter with 125 MAK--Good Seeing

The moral is, seeing is everything! 

Copernicus, May 6, 2017

Last night's excellent seeing made for some great lunar images! I'll be posting them over the next few days, highlighting some the "tourist spots" on our nearest neighbor.

First up--the crater Copernicus.

At 93 km wide and almost 4 km deep, Copernicus is a major feature, with rays (the "splash" around the crater), spreading out over 800 km into the relatively smooth Mare material that surrounds it. The terracing on the inner walls of the crater is clearly visible in this image (there are 3 terraces, extending about 30 km). The crater has three central peaks about 1.2 km high.

This image was taken with the 125 mm MAK  and 2x Barlow and the MC DS2.3+ camera. 150 avi frames stacked and processed in Registax 6.

Click on this image for a larger, more detailed view.

Jupiter May 6, 2017

After a cool and windy day, the evening gave us some of the best seeing in months here in Indiana. I couldn't resist the opportunity to dig out the 125MAK OTA (a first-generation ETX) and to take some images of the Moon and Jupiter using the Mallincam DS2.3+. With the GRS in the center of the disk for much of the evening, Jupiter promised some interesting images. The results were better than I could have expected. Seeing was superb--long, slow ripples as opposed to the rapid "choppy water" fluctuations we normally get here. The detail is excellent for such a small aperture. This image is a stack of around 100 avi frames processed and stacked in Registax 6. The final image is cropped.

Below is the image before cropping:

Three of the Galilean Moons are visible, and the next pic enhanced to show them better:

Furthest out on the left of the planet is Ganymede; Io is closer to Jupiter in this image. The moon to the right is Europa.

The Sun 4/24/17

A few spots visible today in this shot of ARs 2653 and 2651. Taken with PST-DS and MC DS2.3+.

The Pinwheel Galaxy April 23, 2017

These images of the Pinwheel in Ursa Major were taken as a test of the DS16C imager in hazy skies with consequent moderate light pollution. I took some suboptimal darks (I made the mistake of taking them at the same exposure setting as the camera was set to for imaging, whereas the current recommendation is to take darks at 2x exposure). The result is significant color noise that produces a diagonal "sleet" on the image as a result of stacking. I turned down saturation (about 90 x 60s frames were stacked here) and that helped a little. I'm going to take some more exposures as soon as we get clear skies and experiment on getting images as noise free as possible while exploiting the imager's gain control to keep exposures as short as possible. This a cropped image taken with the 8 inch f/4 newt.

The Sun 4/18/2017

Although we're well past SolarMax and the solar disk looks blank on many days, it can still be interesting in H-alpha. This is a single-image capture (not a stack) taken with the DS16C and PST-DS. The active area and prominence at the top of the image is sunspot 2644, a returning spot that produced a number of M-Class flares in early April.

The illumination of the image is somewhat uneven. This lack of uniformity is caused by the PST filter's "sweet spot." The DS filter reduces this effect, but it does not eliminate it. For the best aesthetic images of the sun with the PST, it's better to stitch together a mosaic of separate captures of separate areas of the solar disk.

2/18/17 Imaging Session

It's been a while since I posted here. The winter has not been good here in Indiana, and the Spring has been mostly cloudy with clear skies coinciding with full moons and evening events that kept me from the scope.

Here's a few images I captured on an unseasonably warm February evening. These pix were captured with the 8 inch f/4 astrograph and Mallincam DS 16c.

The Crab Nebula

This image shows the Crab as captured by the DS16c. The combination of F/4 scope and large imaging ship captures a very wide field. It's not ideal for the Crab and other small planetary nebulae, but for large objects, like M42 (below), it is a perfect combination.

Orion Nebula

The wide field is also useful for capturing groupings of objects, as in this image of the Cigar Galaxy and Bode's Galaxy:

Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy