Jupiter 2-1-17

Finally, Jupiter is back in the night sky! Oh, how I have missed this beautiful gas giant of a planet. As much as I enjoy imaging deep sky objects, my first love will always be planetary imaging. There is just something about imaging our local neighbors that puts me in a wonderful mood. Watching Jupiter rotate throughout the night is a sight to behold, and for such a large planet it does so about every 10 hours as opposed to our 24 hour Earth rotation. This means I can watch the great red spot on Jupiter slide across the surface in a matter of hours, and I can even see the movement of its 4 brighter moons. The black dot you see in the image is a shadow transit of Europa, one of Jupiter's larger moons.

P.S. This is my best image of Jupiter...so far

Technical details:
9,000 frames de-rotated in Winjupos
Stacked in Autostakkert2
Sharpened in Avistack2 and PS
Celestron Nexstar 6se telescope + 2x Barlow + 24mm eyepiece and extension tube
Celestron AVX Mount
Asi120mc-s camera

November 14 2016 Supermoon taken in Cathedral City, CA

I hope you all enjoyed the Supermoon, here's a hi-res image I took of the Supermoon in Cathedral City! This is a 25 panel mosaic stitched together to create the final image. I will say that I didn't notice much of a difference in the overall apparent size of the full Moon, but it was a heck of a lot brighter than normal.

M5 Globular Cluster taken in the Coachella Valley, CA 7-12-16

Messier 5 or M5 is a globular cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens. M5 spans 165 light-years in diameter, and is around 13 billion years old. This makes it one of the largest known globular clusters and is one of the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way. M5 is about 24,500 light-years from us here on Earth. and is thought to contain as many as 500,000 stars!

This is a stack of 40x1 minute exposures at ISO 1600, camera used is a Canon 450d, and a Celestron Nexstar 6se telescope + wedge and a 6.3 focal reducer, 60mm guidescope + asi120mc-s. Taken in Cathedral City, CA 7-12-16

Mars 6-23-16 Cathedral City CA - Nexstar 6se asi120MC-S

Here is a shot of Mars taken last night 6-23-16. Mars is shining brightly at the moment, due to its recent opposition last month. The desert heat has limited my deep sky imaging lately due to tons of image noise, but the planets are still shining brightly, as is the moon. This was taken with my new ZWO asi120mc-s planetary camera attached to a Nexstar 6se. This camera blows my old Phillips spc900 webcam out of the water! The surface details really stick out in this one, and you can see cloud formations. This is my best image of Mars...so far!

Here is another one from 6-25-16, way better seeing this night!

M27 The Dumbbell Nebula 5-18-16

The Dumbbell Nebula, or Messier 27 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula. In 1764, Charles Messier discovered the Dumbbell Nebula, and was the first of its kind to be discovered, a planetary nebula. A planetary nebula is named more for its round appearance to early astronomers, and has nothing to do with actual planets. A planetary nebula is actually the remains of an old exploded star, and is made up of  ejected ionized gas.

This is a stacked image of 17 1 minute exposures at ISO 1600, 17 light frames, 17 dark frames, and 17 bias frames. Stacked in DeepSkyStacker with minor tweaks to contrast and brightness in CS6. These were all taken in my backyard in Cathedral City, CA with average seeing and visibility.

On a side note, I am personally blown away by this image. There has to be over a million stars in the picture! How cool is that right?

*UPDATE
After going through the data, and some help from internet astronomy friends, I Have re-edited using PixInsight LE and was able to pull out much more data this time around. The first 2 images are the new edits, and the last 2 images are the old data.