Jupiter through C8 Telescope2 Jupiter_1_26_2014 3_13_51
Raw Video Final Image

I was having another look at some video sequences I took of Jupiter a year ago and thought it might be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison of the raw video and a finished image.

The raw video image on the left is pretty close to what was displayed on my netbook as the video was received from the telescope via the ZWO ASI 120 MC camera.

The image on the right consists of a stack of the best 507 video frames from the sequence of approximately 1500 frames. The individual frames were stacked, aligned, and sharpened (with wavelet processing) in Registax. Color saturation and levels were adjusted using GIMP.

I rate the seeing on this night as fair to poor, or 2.5 on the 5 point Peach scale.  The Peach scale, devised by renowned planetary photographer Damian Peach, defines fair and poor seeing as follows:

3. Fair Seeing – Slight or moderate undulation or fuzziness. Reasonable contrast. Minor planetary details occasionally seen.

2. Poor – Very Poor seeing – Severe undulations or fuzziness. Poor contrast. Large scale detail poorly defined. Minor details invisible.

Based on Peach’s written descriptions and example videos, which you can see at his website, I peg the seeing for this imaging session somewhere between 2 (fair) and 3 (poor), or 2.5.

What do you think?

Details:
Date: 26 January 2014 03:13:51 UT
Location: Edmond, Oklahoma USA
Telescope: 203mm f/10 SCT (Celestron C8), 2x Barlow
Camera: ZWO ASI 120MC

The top image is a view of Mars from my backyard in Edmond, Oklahoma USA on the night of March 31st (morning of April 1st UT).  This was my first look at Mars for the 2011-2012 close-approach season.

In this image, clouds are visible over the Tharsis region on Mars’ eastern limb. There are also some high clouds over the western limb.   South is at the top.  Wayne Jaeschke, over at Exosky.net, has some great images of the Tharsis region with the tops of several martian volcanoes poking through the clouds.

It is early summer in Mars’ northern hemisphere right now so the North Polar Cap has shrunk to a tiny size, at least as viewed from this angle.

Mars was at opposition on March 3rd, and at its closest approach for this two year cycle on March 5th.  At that time Mars’  equatorial diameter as seen from Earth was 13.9 arcseconds.  By the time this image was taken, the distance between Earth and Mars had increased and Mars’ apparent size had shrunk to 12.6 arcseconds.  At the time of this observation, Mars and Earth were nearly 112 million kilometers apart.

This image is a stack of 161 frames from a video sequence taken with a Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI). The telescope was a 203mm Celestron 8 (C8) with a 3X Barlow lens (full details below).

For comparison, the bottom image is from the NASA/JPL Solar System Simulator.  It shows the predicted view of Mars as seen from Earth at the time of my image.

Image Details:

01 April 2012  02:55:46 UT
203mm SCT (C8) f/10, 3X Barlow, Meade LPI  161 frames
Seeing 2/10, Trans 3/5,  Edmond, Oklahoma  USA
CM  42 degrees, Eq. Diameter 12.6 arcsec, Distance 111.529 mil km
see also http://www.arksky.org/alpo/alpoimg/Mar170DB8B9.jpg
Image captured using K3CCDTools.

It is possible to take useful images of the Sun with modest equipment from a simple backyard location.

This past Saturday, after counting sunspots and sunspot groups visually, I hooked up a  Meade LPI webcam to the telescope to record a  sunspot group associated with NOAA Active Region 11445.  AR 11445 was just rotating into view from the Sun’s southeast limb.

The top  image is from my small (150mm)  reflector telescope. The telescope mount does not have a drive to turn the telescope in synch with the Earth’s rotation,  so the Sun’s image drifted through the field of view while I captured a stream of images as video sequence. I used the free Registax software to align, stack, and slightly process twenty-one of the best images from the video sequence.  The dark smudge under the sunspots was caused by a large fleck of dust inside the imaging device.

For comparison,  the bottom image shows the same area of the Sun taken at exactly the same time by NASA’s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory.   Both images were taken on March 25, 2012, at 16:35:34 UT.

 

This is my solar observing rig.   It consists of a 150mm f/9 Newtonian reflector, an Orion full aperture solar filter, and a Meade LPI webcam.  The telescope aperture is stopped to 80mm by a piece of black felt with a circular cut-out on the inside of the solar filter.  The LPI images are captured as a video stream on a netboook computer using K3CCD Tools. The netbook is just barely visible on the table beside the telescope.