Saturn, Izar

Saturn was great tonight. The rings are almost on edge. With the 100 f/6 achromat at 120x, I could see the slim shadow of the rings across the planet and three moons in orbit. Seeing was pretty good, and I was able to kick up to 240x. That's a lot for the 100mm scope, but it handled it well. The shadow was bolder at the higher magnification, and the moons more obvious when seeing cooperated. The rings are obviously not exactly on edge now, and this was more obvious at 240x. It's a nice view, though.
After looking at Saturn, I swung the scope around to Epsilon Bootes, also called Izar. Izar is a double, and tonight it was cleanly split at 240x. That's one I did not think I would coax out of my little achromat. This was a lot of fun.

Saturn

Early this morning, around 12:30 am, I took a peak at Saturn through the AR6. Five moons were on one side, like beads dripping off the rings---a very nice sight. I could also see cloud bands on the planet. The rings themselves were not uniform in color, but they appear so narrow now that I did not recognize any features.

Luna in the AR6 (3-3-2009) --- The "Lunar X"

This is not a bad image considering the high clouds and haze through which it was shot. It is a single exposure with the XTi through the AR6 at prime focus. The upper image has been processed further in PSE7. The upper image includes the famous "Lunar X" described here and here.

Venus in Broad Daylight

Venus was easy to see today during the day. I took these shots about 3 pm with the XTi and the Nikon 300mm f/4.

Luna & Venus (2-27-2009)

The Moon and Venus were very close in the sky tonight. It was a great photo opportunity. If you click on the images, you can see Venus as a crescent like the moon. That is because its orbit around the sun is inside of the earth's. All of these were taken with the Canon XTi and a Nikon 300mm f/4 lens. The last image is six separate images stacked in Registax 5 (which worked on Venus but not so well on the Moon). It was taken at around 6 pm. The others were taken between 6 and 7.

Comet Lulin Passing Saturn---the Movie!

The sub-frames taken for the image below are put together in a movie accessible here! What you will see in the movie are two, 9-minute periods with about a 20-minute break in between them (during which 20-minute break the comet shifts position noticeably). This is time lapse: the whole movie is only 1 minute long---40 minutes crammed into 1 minute.

Pay careful attention please to the position of the comet relative to the background stars. The movement is easiest to see against those stars' positions.

The first 9-minute set of sub-frames was taken at 800 ISO and is 20 frames of 20 seconds each with 3-second intervals in between. The second is the same only taken at 1600 ISO.

Enjoy!

Saturn & Lulin (02-23-2009)

This was Saturn (the bright one on the left, with at least one moon) and Comet Lulin around 11:50 pm on the night of February 23rd. The comet was moving so fast that I can see its position change in each of my 20-second exposures. Flipping through them looks like a movie! So this is just 5 x 20" with the XTi and WO 0.8 ff II through the AT66ED, processed in Nebulosity and PSE7.

Here is a focus on just the comet. This is 20x20" of the same set of subs stacked on the comet itself.