Mars (08 Nov 2022)

 Mars, Planet, Solar System  No Responses »
Nov 102022
 

Mars is finally rising above my tree line a little earlier in the morning. The seeing has been fairly poor the last couple of days but it has settled down enough to get some useful pictures. The prominent blue feature on the northern limb of the planet is seasonal cloud cover over the north polar ice cap. This cloud feature is known as the north polar hood and is often seen forming in Mars’ early autumn and may last until late spring.

As usual, south is at the top. If you want to identify any of the surface features using a Martian map, the image’s central meridian is 179.2°.

Mars
[(V)L:1530×0.5ms;R:1756×1.2ms;G:1445×1.9ms;B:34×4.7ms]

 Posted by at 16:05

Here comes Didymos (17 Sep 2022)

 Asteroid, Minor Planet, Solar System  No Responses »
Sep 222022
 

On the 26th of September NASA’s DART mission will intentionally crash a spacecraft into a moon of the asteroid (65803) Didymos. This will be the first test of a kinetic impactor to see if energy can be used to change the orbit of an asteroid. The moon’s name is Dimorphos and it orbits its parent asteroid in 11.9 hours. If successful, the impact is expected to reduce the orbital period to 11.8 hours. This will make the moon orbit slightly closer to Didymos. The ability to add or subtract energy from a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet may be critical at some future date.

This clip is ten 300 second images. The moon Dimorphos is too small for me to see.

 Posted by at 21:16

Neptune & Triton

 Neptune, Planet, Solar System  No Responses »
Aug 132022
 

I finally got around to processing some non-asteroid data (the weather has not cooperated for several days). I took this image on the evening of the 29th of July.

Even at roughly 3 billion miles Neptune is bright enough that I had to take a short image (5 sec) to prevent over exposure. As indicated, one of the bright objects immediately to the right of the planet is Neptune’s largest moon Triton.

Star-like Neptune with two small objects adjacent to the planet. The top one is the moon Triton; the bottom one is a background star.

Neptune & Triton [CV:1x5s]

Triton is the 7th largest moon in the solar system (our moon is fifth on the list). Triton is somewhat unique in that it is in a retrograde orbit which supports the current theory that it is likely a captured Kuiper belt object. Imagery taken during Voyager 2’s flyby in 1989 shows a very thin atmosphere and active cryovolcanism in the form of nitrogen geysers.

 Posted by at 15:44

Mars (24 Jul 2022)

 Mars, Planet, Solar System  No Responses »
Jul 262022
 

Mars is just rising early enough to clear the trees and still be in relatively dark skies. As usual, this image matches the view in the telescope with south at the top. Mars just passed its winter solstice on the 21st of July.

Mars [(V)TR:2061×0.2ms; TG:2062×0.34ms; TB:2060×0.28ms]

Click here for a full explanation of the exposure data.

 Posted by at 13:29

Testing new telescope/camera combination

 Moon, Solar System  No Responses »
Jun 202022
 

I am starting to experiment with a full color camera for streaming use. This image of the Moon was taken through my ED80T (80mm f/6.0) with an Orion StarShoot Mini camera. It is capable of still imagery as well as video at a moderate full frame rate of 59 fps. I was hoping to have it ready for the recent total lunar eclipse, but clouds conspired to prevent that. The camera actually arrived the day of the eclipse and I would have been winging it but would have given it a shot. So, I’m taking the opportunity now when the Moon is dominating the skies to fine tune some operating parameters.

Moon [F:1x10s]

This scope/camera combination will give me a full disk image of the Moon and Sun, so it is destined to make the trip to Texas for the total solar eclipse on the 8th of April 2024.

 Posted by at 13:12
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