Wednesday, May 31, 2006

New Crayford focuser

I bought a Baader Crayford Focuser from DHinds. It arrived today, very prompt, I specified a day and it turned up at mid-day. Free postage and packing also :-)
I haven't used it yet but it seems a solid chunk of metal.
It also allows me to use 2" EP's now... hmm what shall I get now?



Jupiter 30th May 2006

wow!... a clear'ish night :-)

You can see more clearly in this prime focus image a feature in the 'South Temperate' that was very prominent when observing.





Io is at 5.4 mag in the image below.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Jupiter 29th May 2006

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Hadley Rille from Apollo 15 mapping camera

See... even though it's cloudy I can still get pictures of the same old things.

AS15-M-1423

Aristarchus mosaic... wow!

Here's a great mosaic by Stefan Lammel of the crater Aristarchus that I just found on the LPOD Photo Gallery site.
Original pictures taken from Kipp Teagues Apollo Site.

... it's still raining :-( and has been since the 16th.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Mars Image; Low Sun from 'Low Ridge' : Spirit 01-May-2006

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit from the slopes of "Husband Hill."

Saturn's moon Mimas - May 5, 2006

Taken from the Cassini site.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Jupiter 16th May 2006



Strange dark rift/patch appearing on Jupiters disk.

Never twice the same Full Moon.

Laurent Laveder's pictures and animation oflibration/varying distance over a year:-

http://tinyurl.com/kdeup

Sunday, May 14, 2006

HST images of Red Spot Jr

Red Spot Jr explained at the University of California, Berkeley site.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Jupiter

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Tycho & Clavius

Seeing tonight 11th May 2006

As you can see from my seeing chart link, it's supposed to be good seeing tonight... we shall see ;-)

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Jupiter 9th May 2006

Friday, May 05, 2006

The Moon 5th May 2006









Posidonius from 3rd May 2006

I love imaging this crater... don't know if you noticed? ;-)

Jupiter 16th April 18:42 UT - HST images

HST site

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Jupiter 3rd May 2006


I thought the seeing was going to be good last night because I was imaging the Moon earlier and I was getting some patches of good seeing. But Jupiter is still very low in the sky, and there was a great deal of turbulence, the disc was wobbling like a jelly.
The top image is in B&W, and the lower colour. I say colour, although I'm having problems getting the correct colour because they are so subtle. Plus I have to use an orange of yellow filter to bring out any detail. Managed to capture Ganymede and Io though, the gamma setting had to be raised to about 60% to pick them up.
Not much to see on Jupiter's disc, the GRS is around the back :-(
These were taken with a Barlow lens attached to the Toucam. I unscrewed my 2 x Celestron lens from the Barlow tube and screwed it directly onto the Toucam. It produces a nice sized disc with more contrast. When I attach a filter and then the Barlow lens, it magnifies even more.
If I use the Barlow lens as per normal, the image (in these seeing conditions) seems lacking in contrast and detail.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Jupiter 2nd May 2006

Monday, May 01, 2006