Jupiter, 2/6/2026 (close to midnight CST)

 

 This is the best of the night, 1250/5k with the QHYiii485C through the CFF 290 at f/20.25. I'm a dabbler in planetary thus far.

 

And here is Jupiter with Europa, best 2.5k/5k. 

Saturn & Titan (11-22-2025 at 7:13 CST)

Here is Saturn with the rings edge-on. I tried to catch Titan crossing the planet's face, but by the time the sun set and the telescope and camera were set up, Titan had just slipped off.  This is best 500/2000 with the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain at f/13.5 and QHY 5iii485c. If you look closely, another moon, Rhea, sits just to the left of the rings. Dione lurks out beyond it in the shadows.

Titan Shadow Transit (Sept. 4, 2025)

 

Here are two finished images of Titan's shadow transiting Saturn.  These were gathered between 6 and 7 a.m. UTC (1 and 2 a.m. CDT) from my backyard.  With events like these, we take conditions as they come: the sky was a bit hazy, and seeing was not great for more than a few seconds at a time.  I'm happy to have some images.

CFF 290mm f/13.5 with a Dakin 1.5x Barlow lens; QHY5iii485c.

Jupiter at 10:45 a.m. CST, Dec. 28, 2024

 

Best 1k/5k with the QHY 458C and the Spooner-Ricks 6" f/8 at f/12.

Jupiter: Double Shadow Transit (Nov. 23, 2021 or UT Nov. 24, 2021)

 

Sometimes the sun and one of Jupiter's moons line up so that the moon's shadow crosses Jupiter's face. The shadow looks like a black spot on the planet. Tonight two shadows crossed Jupiter together---a photo op! The right shadow is Ganymede's; the left is Callisto's. In between them is the Great Red Spot. To the right and below the planet, you can spot the moons themselves, Ganymede nearer Jupiter and Callisto further away.

 

This image was shot through my wonderful 6-inch f/8 Newtonian telescope with a QHY5iii485c. 5,268 subframes were taken and 60% of them stacked and sharpened to make this image. The scope is Dobson-mounted, so I dragged the scope twice to make Jupiter transit across the camera chip three times.  I'd have used the CFF290 on the NJP, but I can only see Jupiter from the north end of the yard, where I can't see the north star to set up my mount (OK, yeah, without drift-aligning, but we all have our limits).

Lunar (Th)rilles! (Mar. 2021)

This portion of the moon's surface is covered with rilles.  It looks scratched, as if a giant cat pawed across it.  But probably these features were formed when lava tubes just below the surface collapsed, or at least that is what I have read.

The crater to the right with mountains in the middle is Bullialdus.  The long scratches stretching across the center are Rimae Hippalus.  The rille across the bottom right is Rima Hesiodus.  To its left, criss-crossing a crater (Ramsden Crater), are Rimae Ramsden.  Near the top, extending from near the top of the rightmost of Rimae Hippalus is Rima Agatharchides, which travels across Crater Agatharchides P.

In the upper left are ripples, not rimae, around the edges of Mare Humorum, but they form a nice contrast to Rimae Hippalus.

This is best 1200/2000 taken with the QHY5iii485C through the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain at its native f/13.5.

Crater Plato and Laplace Beach (Mar. 2021)

The larger crater on the right is Plato, and the mountains arching to the left of it include craters all named Plato (M, B, C, F, etc.) or Laplace (D, B, L, M, etc.).  The curve ends at Laplace Promontorium, and down from that is Laplace A.  The two craters down and to the right of Laplace Promontorium are Helicon (left) and La Verrier.

Some things to note about the image: 

1) The long shadow cast by Laplace Promontorium.  Using trigonometry, one could figure the height of the Promontorium by the length of the shadow.

2) Lines of craters.  A small, bright line to the right of La Verrier is a row of craters probably formed when a meteorite that was broken in pieces struck one piece after the other.  There is another just a little to the right of that line that shows as a darker line.

3) The dark canyon extending straight down the lower slope of Plato.

4) The twisting, winding canyon extending down from Plato's upper left wall.

5) The streaks in the topography running up along the upper right side of the image.  What could possibly make such a feature?  It's as if some extraterrestrial giant pulled a rake along the moon.

This is best 1200 of 2000 images taken with the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain at f/13.5 with the QHY5iii485c camera.

Copernicus and shrapnel around the mountains (Feb. 23, 2021)

Here's another moon shot.  Copernicus is one of what I consider "big splat" craters on the moon (Tycho, Aristarchus, and Kepler are others).  Copernicus is about 800 million years old---young by lunar standards.  That's why it is lighter than the surrounding area.  Anyway, the splat threw up lots of material, so the area around Copernicus is covered with little craters and stuff that I've always figured resulted from the splat.  But a ridge of mountains rings this whole area, and those were there before the splat.

Some of my other favorite craters are in this area, too, like Lansberg, Reinhold, and Hortensius E (very cool), but I'll let you find those.  Also find T. Mayer C, which has a great internal structure.  A good resource for scouting around the moon is the map made from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.  Find the "Quickmap" at the LRO website here.  Click on the guide at upper left, click Overlays, and click "Nomenclature" on the first set of layers.  That imposes map labels on the craters.

This image is a stack of 2002/2002 images taken with the QHY5iii485c camera through the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain at f/13.5, native focal length.  I just did the basic AutoStakkert, Registax, Photoshop routine and also used Canon Digital Prof'l 4. I can see details smaller than 1km on this image.