Saturn over the Coachella Valley, CA 5-2-16

I got the telescope out early this morning to photograph an ISS Moon transit, but unfortunately it occurred at 6:42am and the Sun was too bright, so I was unable to catch it. I did however catch a beautiful shot of Saturn. Saturn is currently at an apparent magnitude of .17 and will peak in brightness at the beginning of June this year. This is by far my best image of Saturn to date, the surface colors look amazing, as does the famous rings. This was taken with a Celestron Nexstar 6se + Phillips spc900 webcam 24mm eyepiece 2x barlow 2000 frames stacked in Avistack.

Milky Way, Mars, Saturn, and Antares triangle

4-30-16 High winds, poor seeing, and a last quarter Moon got in my way this morning but I did manage to catch the Mars, Saturn, and Antares triangle along with a little Milky Way so it wasn't all for nothing. This was a 2 minute exposure ISO 1600 Canon 450d piggybacked on a Celestron Nexstar 6se.

Mars, Saturn, and Antares in the pre-dawn sky

Good morning Coachella Valley, I woke up early enough this morning and noticed that Mars, Saturn, and Antares were perfectly lined up in the palm trees in my backyard. So, whats an astronomer to do? Grab the camera of course! Picture taken at 5:25am, with a Canon 450d ISO 100 F/5 30s exposure

Venus and Saturn in the pre-dawn hours 1-21-16

This is my last post of the night, and involves Saturn and Venus. Saturn is on its way up in the pre-dawn sky and Venus is on its way down. Saturn is at an apparent magnitude 0.53 and peaks on June 2nd at 0.00 apparent magnitude. The rings of Saturn are a crown jewel in our Solar System, and viewing them through a large or small telescope is really out of this world.

Venus, on the other hand has already reached its peak brightness on September 14th, at an apparent magnitude of -4.53 and currently is at a -4.00. Venus is actually taking shape and shining quite bright. The last time I did any imaging of Venus (other than the daytime Venus/Moon conjunction here) it was more of a crescent shape. Venus goes through phases similar to our Moon, because it lies in front of the earth and closer to the Sun. As it rotates around the Sun, different phases can be seen from here on Earth.

Saturn

Saturn

Venus

And in case you missed my previous posts today about Mars, and Jupiter here are the links

A Picture of Saturn on 7-22-15 Webcam + Telescope

I found a picture of Saturn that I took on 7-22-15 and wanted to share it. Saturn was at apparent magnitude 0.37 and was shining brightly towards the south. This image is actually a short 2-3 minute video taken with a Logitech c310 Webcam attached to my Celestron Nexstar 6SE and I used image stacking software later on by processing the video in Avistacks, this is the end results.