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Sunday, June 29, 2008
New Stuff - Minor Planets page
Jupiter is nearing opposition. And so, there are two new pics on the homepage. I've also been dabbling in
minor planets and have started a minor planet page. There are two minor planets posted now. Especially exciting
for me is Juno, a larger minor planet, because you can see some detail. The rest don't look much different from a star
except they tend to be redder (if I were to show color). I will have most in monochrome since their small size
wouldn't show much anyway. I also added a couple of pics to the Milky Way page. I hope to have
more soon. More in the queue too.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
A little more of Pluto
I followed up a couple of days later and took some more pictures of Pluto. Check out the Pluto page so you can
how it moved against the background stars. It really is Pluto!
I still use my Imaging Source software to capture most of my images but I now remove the bias and dark current from the
pictures that last more than a second or so. By removing the bias and dark current, it improves the signal to noise
ratio so that fainter objects are more visible (a good thing for most things in the night sky). But, even though my
Imaging Source software is very easy to use in the field, it doesn't capture the exposure time or the ambient temperature
or what kind of telescope I'm using etc. I found a little plug-in to my Maxim DL software that lets me add info like
this to the headers of my picture files in batches (before I was doing this one picture at a time). Needless to say
(why do people say that and then say the thing anyway??) it saves me a lot of time. The plug-in is called QuickStuff
and the author was kind enough to help me through my installation problem that I had. The QuickStuff URL is http://www.ccdimages.com/quickstuff.aspx in case you are a planetary imager that sometimes might need something like this.
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You can submit comments below. Let me know if you want to see more. Thanks.
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| WIS, Europa, Ganymede, RGB f29 08/01/09 |
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| The Wesley Impact Site has elongated, two moons and the GRS near the limb |
| Jupiter with Wesley Impact Site, RGB, f29 |
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| The southern pole region shows a black impact mark discovered by Austrailian Anthony Wesley. 072309 |
| Neptune and Triton, RGB, 09/06/09, near opposition |
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| Combined two images. Neptune taken at f29 and Triton, its largest moon, at f10 (then enlarged). |
| It's getting farther, week from closest pass, f/29 |
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| RGB image of Saturn on 3/16, good seeing but fog was rolling in, storms visible |
| It's getting closer, Venus URGB, f10, 3/5/09 |
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| Can see crescent with binos easily, try with naked eye to test your vision |
| Mercury is always around - RGB 200% f/29 10/21/08 |
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| But usually is too close to Sun - it was about 15 deg from horizon in morning (east) - poor seeing |
| It's getting farther, Uranus RGB 9/6/08, 200% f29 |
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| Same image scale as Neptune. A lot of green when imaging, less blue but boosted blue. 6th from Sun |
| Near Mars' closest distance to Earth for 2007 |
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| (It's getting farther too) |
This is an LRGB photo of Mars made on 12/21/07 05:52 GMT. It's centered near Eden but Syrtis Major is still
visible. I have an 11" SCT and used a monochrome Imaging Source USB 60 fps camera at f/25. I used Registax,
Photoshop and Maxim DL during processing. Thanks for visiting!
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