The Dutch Observatory

The wrath of Fay brought a long period of clouds and rain to the Atlanta region, so I was happy when the first opportunity came up to do some more imaging.  Last night the clouds were mostly gone and I gave Jupiter another try.  Not great, but I need to practice!

Here two images made relative early in the evening.

The results overview for Monday night’s imaging is limited to the red images of the sets, because I was unable to construct the RGB for two sets.  I mixed up the filter color wheel with the actual image.

The image with the barlow alone is unclear because of heavy turbulence during the 500 frame avi run.  The image which was made with an extension of 1/2″ shows nice detail, but I don’t have the proper blue channel for this to complete the RGB.

Monday August 18 I continued the test imaging using the Meade 2x barlow.  However could only complete three images instead of 5 because I did get confused with which image was made with which filter wheel.  I guess I am going to have to get organized here! 

The best result came from an image without barlow which was increased 1.5x in Photoshop.

Result overview of the image tests from Sunday August 17 from Charlie Elliott Observing Field.

The first two images on the first line had the barlow screwed directly in the filter thread of the nose piece of the camera.  The first image is an RGB while the second is IRGB.  The third is an green filter image of the barlow and a 1/2″ extension screwed between the barlow and the nose piece.  (Clouds made the completion of this image impossible (no blue image).

The next two lines are RGB and IRGB images while the conditions changed very rapidly.  I am using the barlow with the 1 1/2″ extension here

The first image on the fourth line is an image without the barlow.  The next two are magnified 1.5 and 2x in Photoshop.

The conditions were bad transparency, and seeing, with the last images being made under slight better conditions as the night went on until it started to dew over my scope…..

Having received much advise on proper sampling to arrive at the proper configuration for my imaging setup for Jupiter, I set out to run some test images. 

Jon Wood let me use his old Meade 2x barlow lens which allows the barlow cell to be removed and screw into the nose piece of the DMK camera.  In addition, Jon had a 1/2″ and 1″ extension for the nose piece, which allows 4 different capture sizes.  The results will be put on my website as they are ready. 

Here two images made on Sunday August 17.  One is with the 2x barlow, the second is without but the image size increased 1.5x in Photoshop.  It should be noted that the weather was not good because of clouds.  Some of the image sequences had to be aborted because the brightness faded completely when clouds moved in front of Jupiter.

The first evening with some clear skies.  Transparency and Stability were very low and the seeing was not good either.  High clouds kept moving through the sky with some lower clouds obstructing the view completely at times.  However, I had to give Jupiter another try.

I did receive my scope back from Celestron last week and over the weekend I finished my new wedge, so here is a new image from Jupiter from Sunday night. The image was taken about 2:42 UT on July 21, 2008.  The image was taken with the CPC925 and the DMK21AU-04AS in direct focus at F/10.

I am pretty happy with the increase in detail which I am getting with the wedge!  Need to check the collimation and exposure times for captures with the barlow. 

Here some images of the Moon from the evening of July 11th made at Charlie Elliott. Since my CPC was still in repair, Jon, let me put my camera on the back of his LX200R and run some AVIs of several objects on the moon. The air was very unstable and the wind caused the image to float a lot. The fog drifted in and out again.  However, the results are not too bad.

GRS transit on July 2. 2008.  Jon Wood and I made this image from Charlie Elliott using his scope, a 10″ LX200R on a EQ6 mount and my DMK24AU4.  We run 2000 frames each color at 30fps and 1/30 seconds each. 

The full Moon of June 18th was a “solstice moon”, coming only two days before the beginning of northern summer. This is significant because the sun and full Moon are like kids on a see-saw; when one is high, the other is low. This week’s high solstice sun gives us a low, horizon-hugging Moon and a strong Moon Illusion.
However, I did get a double treat!!  In addition to the Moon illusion, the Moon and the surrounding sky was deep orange.  What a sight!!