Astrophotography and Jupiter

On Friday night (May 19, 2017) the ETX-125 and I had a late date with some sky objects.

I was able to quickly align the scope and when I punched in Jupiter, I found the planet sitting a little below center.  I was using the 32mm Plossl which gives me about 60 power.  After trying to define the various bands (I could make out the two major bands) on the planet, I decided I would try again to photograph the monster planet.

My previous attempt and only my second time trying astrophotography, was a total failure.  This time I was able to produce an image which didn't look like a blurry blob on my monitor.  That image is below:

I think it is a rather good image considering this was my third time imaging.  If you are wondering why there aren't any of the Galilean moons visible, the reason is simple.  The planet requires one exposure, the moons require a different exposure.  In order to to have both in an image, I would need to expose the planet, then expose the moons, then superimpose the planet on the moon image.  There might be a way to obtain an image of both at the same time, but I haven't figured it out yet.

By the way, if you are wondering what I used to make the image above, it was MalliCam's SkyRaider AG1.2c camera.  I shot a 30-second video and when processing the file, I ran it through Registax 6 to obtain the final image.  Most of process was automatic, but I was able to tweak the settings before I saved the image.

One thing I liked about the tracking of the Meade was I went inside after acquiring Jupiter to prep the camera.  I was inside for five or ten minutes and when I came back out, a look through the eyepiece showed Jupiter still in view.  It was barely moved from center.

After I finished with Jupiter, I input M13 into the control pad and the telescope found its way there and when I peered through the eyepiece, I noticed a nice grayish ball slightly above center and looking about half as much bigger than Jupiter did at 60 power.  I thought I could make out individual stars on the periphery of the dim ball, but I just wasn't sure.

My next target has been something I have tried to see for years...M101.  I punched M101 in the Autostar hand controller and hit GOTO and the telescope moved for a moment or two, then stopped. I looked in the eyepiece and nothing. Well, nothing isn't quite right.  There was stars visible, but in the central area there was nothing.  It may have been M101, but all I saw was blackness.

My next target was M82.  After a short period of movement the scope beeped telling me it is pointed to where M82 should be and when I looked, I could see a nice sliver of light pointed diagonally to the lower right of the view and the upper left of the view.  I admired the view for a few minutes and decided I would attempt to image M82 also.

And then my power tank died.  I had forgotten to make sure it had a good charge.  Wishing I could kick myself, I came in the house to get batteries for the battery pack of the ETX and realized I didn't have the correct size of batteries.

The moral of this post...always check your power supplies!

Jupiter and the Moon

As the moon rose on the evening May 7, it followed another bright object in the sky...Jupiter. Separated by a little more than three degrees, the pair look mighty fine travelling together.

I brought out the Canon 60D and the Canon 100-400 mm EF-L lens and as the sky faded towards dark, I was able to get this image of the couple.  Jupiter is seen in the upper right area in the full image.

Other than converting the image from Canon RAW to JPG, I also smoothed out the color of the sky. There were a lot of color artifacts which detracted from the actual color of the sky.

After sending the image to a friend of mine in Illinois, he sent back another image from which he was able to determine that the image also showed Jupiter's moon Callisto.  It is difficult to see, but in the full size image, Callisto is located at about 11 o'clock and about a two centimeters from Jupiter.

The camera was tripod mounted and the settings I used to shoot the image were ISO 1000, at f/8 for 1/640 of a second.  The lens was set at 300 mm.

Stormy Days

Along with watching the night skies when clouds aren't hiding everything, I enjoy watching a good thunderstorm.  However, there are normally few severe storms in central Oregon compared to other parts of the United States.

But I was pleasantly surprised when on the evening of May 4, I began seeing lightning flashes southwest of where I live.  I stepped outside to verify what I was seeing and saw flash...flash...flash. Realizing a storm was in progress and moving my way, I prepared my camera and headed to a good vantage point.

Once I found a good place, I began shooting.  I experimented with different settings until I settled on ISO800 with a shutter speed of five seconds and an aperture varying from f/5.6 to f/11.  I chose five second exposures because there was so much lightning that any exposure longer would have over saturated the images with too much light.  All the images were shot with a Canon EOS 60D and a Tolkina 12-28 mm wide angle zoom set at 18 mm.

Most of the lightning was of the cloud-to-cloud variety, with a few distant cloud-to-ground strikes. The storm also moved northward along the mountains 25 miles to my west.  Not all that far north of my town of Redmond, Oregon, the storm turned and headed northeast, giving Madras, Oregon, a night to remember.  But from my vantage point, all I saw was a spectacular light show.

This first set of images shows something I see even less often than thunderstorms in my area...Mammatus clouds.  Mammatus clouds are associated with severe storms and are the bumpy looking clouds which hang down from other clouds.  In the first image, the Mammatus clouds show up in the shadowed area along the upper third of the image.

In this second image, the Mammatus clouds are clearly seen highlighted by the lightning flash.

As I mentioned earlier, most of the lightning was cloud-to-cloud.  I very much enjoyed the way the lightning flashes highlighted the various clouds formations visible during the storm.  But it was the crawlers of cloud-to-cloud lightning which I really enjoyed.  Below are two of the better crawler images.

As nice as these images are (at least to me), they don't come close to my favorite lightning image I shot here years ago.  It was one of three lightning strikes during a short-lived storm, but it was a good one.  You can see the image here.