Coachella Valley Astronomy and Astrophotography: webcam

Showing posts with label webcam. Show all posts

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Jupiter 2-26-16 Europa, Io Transit and Great Red Spot

I've been going over the data that I captured on February 26, 2016 and have finally had the time to post about it. I captured a first in my personal astronomy book. There was a double transit of Europa and Io, and I was able to catch the shadows of both along with Io itself and the famous Great Red Spot! This was the first time I've been able to actually capture a Moon transit of Jupiter. I have previous images of shadow transits, but could never quite capture the Moon itself. The seeing was 4/5 for some the night and near the end of my session it dropped to a 2/5 and a few thin clouds. The images start out great and get a bit worse as the transition was ending. So, unfortunately the best pictures of the night were before the best parts of the transits. I'll take what I can get thought, right?

To be honest, I was sadly disappointed with the weather here in the Coachella Valley during Jupiter's March 8 opposition. I had hoped to capture some data that night and post them, but had to settle for my last viewing opportunity which is what you see here.

Images taken with a Celestron Nexstar 6se + Phillips spc900nc webcam 2x barlow. The first 3 I used a little digital zoom from the webcam.

Europa shadow

Europa shadow and GRS

Io + shadow and GRS

Friday, February 19, 2016

Reprocessed 2-4-16 image of Jupiter with PIPP and Autostackkert 2

Finished reprocessing my AVI from 2-4-16 of Jupiter using PIPP and Autostackkert 2. I am surprised at the extra detail I was able to pull out of the video. PIPP (Planetary Imaging Pre-Processor) does an outstanding job of pre-processing images before you start stacking them in Registax, Avistack, or whatever software you might be using for stacking planetary images. PIPP auto crops the frames and chooses only the best of the best and creates a new AVI video of the end results.

I have mixed results with Autostakkert 2, and usually prefer to use either Registax or Avistack for stacking purposes. The old image was processed with Avistack. This time around, Autostakkert seemed to do the job much better. Afterwards, I still loaded the stacked image into Avistack and played around with the wavelets, but that was more of a personal preference.

Reprocessed 2-4-16 images of Jupiter with PIPP and Autostackkert 2

New reprocessed image of Jupiter

Old processed image of Jupiter

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Jupiter in the Coachella Valley, CA night sky 2-4-16

Jupiter just keeps getting bigger and brighter as the days pass, inching its way to opposition on March 8, when it will be at its closest approach to Earth and its face will be fully illuminated by the Sun. It will be brighter than any other time of the year, peaking at an apparent magnitude of -2.49, and will be visible all night long. This is a great time to get outside and observe Jupiter and its Moons, as the weather here in the Coachella Valley has been lovely, and seeing conditions have been favorable.

These images were taken on 2-4-16 and the seeing was excellent that night. Equipment used was a Celestron Nexstar 6SE + Phillips spc900nc webcam and a 2x barlow

And lastly, I would like to congratulate the @LIGO team for directly detecting Gravitational Waves today #einsteinwasright

Friday, January 22, 2016

Mars - An Amateur Astronomers View 1-21-16

Not only did I take some amazing pictures of Jupiter last night (link here), I also stayed up late enough to catch a couple of the other bright planets, including our nearest neighbor Mars. This was my first attempt at really imaging Mars, and I didn't expect much out of it. Mars is currently at an apparent magnitude of 0.99, and will not peak in brightness until May 22nd at an apparent magnitude -2.06. This is when you should expect some amazing amateur astrophotography pictures of Mars!

Images taken with a Celestron Nexstar 6SE + Phillips spc900nc webcam

Jupiter and the Great Red Spot 1-21-16

Jupiter is putting on an amazing show during the winter months here in the Coachella Valley. The gas giant is currently at an apparent magnitude of -2.30, and gaining in brightness each day until peaking on March 6th with an apparent magnitude of -2.49 for the year. These sets of images show the great red spot and storm bands of Jupiter as it rotates across the night sky. My goal for the evening was to really capture the movements of Jupiter's surface in the span of a night. I think it went quite well, for an amateur astronomer.

The Moon is currently in a waxing gibbous phase, which means its almost a full Moon. The Moon played a small negative factor in last nights observing, but overall didn't affect the images too badly. After this months full Moon, which occurs on January 23rd, I recommend a wonderful opportunity to pull out your telescopes and cameras and view the largest planet in our solar system, as well as 4 other bright planets (Mars, Saturn, Venus, and Mercury) all in our night sky at the same time!

Stay tuned for a future post on exactly when and how to spot Mercury here in the Coachella Valley in the coming weeks. It is currently very low on the horizon at dawn and hard to catch with the mountains and palm trees in the way.

I have pieced together a GIF of this evenings Jupiter pictures showing the planetary rotation and movement of the great red spot. This was a really fun project to put together and I could not be happier with the end results.

Next, we have the images that make up the GIF above. These are all stacked images with Avistack, 1800 frames to produce the final images. Taken with a Celestron Nexstar 6SE and a Phillips SPC900NC webcam.

Here are my final images of Jupiter for the night. I wanted to catch the moons Io and Ganymede, as well as a close up of the great red spot and a bit more of a magnification on Jupiter in general, enjoy!

The Great Red Spot

Jupiter and Io

Jupiter, Io and Ganymede

That is not all we have for today! My next few posts will be about imaging Mars, Venus, and Saturn! I hope you enjoyed my post and I look forward to your comments and feedback via social media and the likes. Clear skies!

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Jupiter Ganymede Shadow Transit and Great Red Spot 1-11-16

The seeing here in the Coachella Valley was excellent last night, so I had the opportunity to spend the night outside with clear skies, and my trusty telescope. It was quite cold outside, for the valley anyways, so hot cocoa was flowing like water. These are definitely my personal best images of Jupiter, so far! I was actually speechless while processing the videos, but that was more than likely the cold temps outside. I am quite satisfied with the results and I hope you enjoy viewing them. Clear Skies!

Image details - Each image is a 1600 frame video stacked in avistack with minor wavelets adjustments at the end. The first image is actually a composite of two, one for Jupiter and another with high gain to show the moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.