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I've been successful at planet imaging since the time of the great Mars opposition in August 2003. Here are some
of my best efforts.
Unless otherwise stated, the camera used is a Creative Pro eX. The telescope is a 127 mm aperture f/12.a Maksutov-Cassegrain,
usually with a 2x Barlow (magnifier).
Click on any image to see full size.
| Saturn. Griffith Observatory Public Star Party |
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| Mar 4th 2006 |
Jupiter, Io by itself to the right, faint Europa to the left with Ganymede
keeping it company. The Red Spot is visible at the lower right on Jupiter. Taken on Sa June 11th 2005 fron the
Griffith Observatory Satellite.
Jupiter and Io, taken at Griffith Observatory Satellite on Sa May 14th
2005 The feature on Jupiter's disk is NOT the Great Red Spot, but another large storm.
| Mars on Aug 30th 2003 |
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| Click on this image to see my Mars page |
Mars, taken on the night of August 30th 2003 from the Griffith Observatory
Satellite near the Los Angeles Zoo. This was the first target for the Creative web camera.
Click on the image to see more of Mars.
Jupiter, taken on March 27th 2004 from the Griffith Observatory Satellite.
This was the night when three satellites cast their shadows on the giant planet at the same time. Granted, it was only
for less than half an hour, but this is a very rare event fron any one spot on the earth. As such, the park rangers
allowed Griffith Observatory to stay open until well after midnight, since the event happened just after midnight local time.
This image was taken just before the three shadows appeared on the planet.
I was not able to image the actual event due to problems obtaining a clean enough series of images.
The large black spot at the upper right is Callisto's shadow, the other
one near center is the satellite Ganymede, and the white spot just off the left limb is Io, ready to begin its crossing of
Jupiter's face. Because of the large solar phase angle, Callisto itself is way off to the right, off the image.
Ganymede's shadow has not started crossing Jupiter's disk despite the fact that Ganymede itself is centered on the disk.
When the triple shadow event did occur, Callisto's shadow was just ready
to step off Jupiter's disk on the right limb, Ganymede's was just on the disk on the left limb, and Io's small shadow was
also just off the left limb.
Taken on Feb 6th 2004 using the Caltech Campus observatory's C-14 and
the Creative Pro eX webcam and a 2x Barlow to boost the focal ratio to f/20.
Despite the fact that this telescope is lacking precise collimation,
something that cannot be fixed, and the corrector plate was dirty, this is still my best color image of Saturn to date.
Another more recent image (April 16th 2005) was in black and white, but shows almost the same level of detail . . .
but was taken with my 127mm f/12 Mak !
| Jupiter and satellite, 1995 |
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| Click on image to see full size |
For hysterial reasons, this image of Jupiter was generated from data
taken in 1995. The original video was generated by a C-14 badly out of collimation (but I didn't know it at the time),
a Watek black-and-white video surveillance camera, and recorded to Video-8 tape. The Watek had 1 lumen sensitivity or
less, but also had an automatic gain adjustment built in, making it impossible to manually set the exposure time or gain.
But at the time I had no way to capture and process the data through my computer.
A decade later, I had the chance to process the video through and see
what I'd actually captured that night. I used Registax 3.0 and Paint Shop Pro to generate the above image. Although
it obviously shows no color, there is still a surprising amount of detail shown. My scanty notes state that this image
was part of a sequence taken at the time of the famous Comet Shoemaker-Levy impact event, but if there's any evidence of the
scars from the impact, I don't see them.
| Mars 1995(?) |
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| Click on image to see full size |
And here is probably one of my first images taken with digital cameras,
and my first of Mars. This was taken with the same equipment as the above Jupiter image. The Eye of Mars, Solis
Lacus, is plainly visible near the center of the disk.
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