The Dutch Observatory

It has been 2 weeks since I had time to do some imaging again.  Here an image of Saturn from last night May 23.  Conditions were variable and I made three runs with various barlows.  Here the image with the WO 2x barlow screwed on the nose piece of the camera which makes it approx. a F 13.  I did not push the image very hard so it is a little soft.

Frank Garner, Stephen Ramsden and I went last night to Charlie Elliott for another ISS/Shuttle session. I made two Clips. The first one while the duo was ascending, the second when it descended in the sky on the way to SSE. I stacked a few frames and sharpened them a little. Here two images of probably my last chance to image the final mission of STS132 Atlantis while docked on the ISS. Since the crew was woken up around 2:30 ET, the crew was asleep while these images were taken.

We went to CE tonight and witnessed a strange phenomenan. As it was still light, Frank and I were looking at what we first thought was Mars. but it was almost as bright as Venus, as Frank, who was looking through his scope, detected a pendulum below it that seemed to go from horizontal down and up again to horizontal and back again. I hurried up to try to make an image of it…, but was too late as we saw it explode, Frank in the eye piece and I with the naked eye. Frank was still following it as it came down until it was not recognizable anymore in the sky. wonder what this was…..

Went last night to CE’s Jon Wood Observing Field to image the ISS and Atlantis.  The pass by was still in twilight at 8:50 P.M. and the highest elevation for the pair was 31 degrees, so a lot of turbulence to dig through   The distance at its closest point was 647 km. from my location and the final frame at least double that.  The beginning frames show Atlantis sticking out on the left and than you see how the rotation angle changes as we follow the pair from the North to the SSE and its gets smaller.  I now have two animated captures of the ISS with two Space Shuttles: Endeavour and Atlantis.  Click on the image below for the movie and give it some time to load:

Have been busy with outreach and other stuff so did finally make time to process an image of Saturn from the evening of May 9th.  Don’t seem to get the processing right yet this year. 

This is kind of the “First Image” on the new pier.  Made the image in two versions Tuesday evening. The first one an RGB, the second an IRGB with the IR as luminance.  It was pretty humid and was only able to get this one image from Saturn before the dew started palying a role. 

The concrete footing of the pier had time to cure during the rain we have had over the last few days.  So yesterday was the first time I could try it out.  It is a little high to lift the scope onto the wedge, but I am going to have a raised floor around the pier and scope, so that will be a lot better when finished.  Here some pictures of the pier with and without Scope.

Beside having been busy with outreach programs and my pier project, I’ve been imaging Saturn this apparation since early March, but the quality has not been good.  Finally I took the time to process some of them and did the best I could.  Remember conditions in March/April were not that great.  Here four images starting with March 7th and ending with April 30th.