[newman]

Pleiads and the surfer's tower. Otherwise the same settings as before, but now with 15 second exposure time.

This photo was taken about 5 km from the center of the city, and at the shore of the sea. I'm actually surprised of how the city lights improve the picture in the first case.

I like the shot and especially how you captured M45 next to the tower. Got similar shots, the Pleiades are a great target for unguided night photography If you plan to revisit it, I'd try a higher ISO, higher f/number combo with dark frame subtraction to combat noise. If you feel like tinkering, that is - might give you a nicer, darker backdrop of a sky and greater contrast.

[watsisname]

Had clear skies and average to above average seeing last night, so I turned my scope and camera back to Mars.  Still got a lot of processing to do (over 1000 images in .fts format, HNNNNG), but so far I've extracted some surface detail that wasn't visible last time around.

A raw image.  Noisy, blurry, and lots of atmospheric distortion.  Looks like crap.



But, stack about 100 or so together and:


Rotated/flipped so that north is at top, east at left.  The North Polar CO2 cap is visible at top, and Syrtis Major is the dark region on the lower right.  Utopia Planitia (sounds like a pleasant place) is the similarly low-albedo feature hugging the ice cap north of Syrtis.

Celestia Screenshot for comparison:

[Mika]

I have been wanting to go outside to photograph for a couple of weeks. Because we are indeed having, first time in several months, clear sunshine and clear night skies. The temperature seems to be settling to modest -21, or to -28 when the wind chill factor is included. Unfortunately, I also acquired flue during the Christmas and have been staying inside mostly for a month, doing not much interesting stuff.

Just you wait when I get the full frame camera on Sunday, I really have to test it then!

[watsisname]

2 combined images showing Mars about 1.5 hours apart.  It spins!

[Mongoose]

you spin Mars right round, baby right round

[watsisname]

Captured this image of Jupiter earlier this evening under average seeing.  Great Red Spot's on the farside, but there's some dark spots hanging out in the temperate belts.



Meade 8" SCT w/ LPI and 3x Barlow lens.  Best 200 of 214 frames stacked in Registax, plus some extra sharpening in GIMP.

[Firstdragon34]

Ahhhhhhh. I miss seeing Jupiter through a telescope! 

[watsisname]

Yeah, of all the planets I actually like looking at Jupiter the most -- it's the largest in apparent size (except for Venus near inferior conjunction) and changes appearance dramatically night to night with the moons, even hour-by-hour with the cloud formations and rapid rotation.

Couple more images -- A combination of exposures to show Jupiter and the 2 innermost Galilean moons together, and some random shots of the Moon.

[watsisname]

Bump for more Jupiter.  Was able to catch the Great Red Spot before it spun out of view.


Shot in late twilight, hence the overall bluish color.  GRS is approaching the limb on the right, with a big wake of turbulence stretching off to its left.  There are also two small reddish (brownish?) spots just above the northern equatorial belt.


Animation composed of images spanning 25 minutes.  Jupiter rotates pretty fast -- once in 10 hours!

You can also see Callisto above Jupiter in a few of the frames, moving to the left.


The four Galilean moons.

From left to right:  Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, Io.  Callisto is behind Jupiter and just barely missed the planet's shadow.

[Herra Tohtori]

That is quite marvellous.

Any chance you could acquire some filters (h-alpha, most importantly, to get rid of light pollution) and do some deep sky photography?

[watsisname]

That's something I've been thinking about, yeah.  Ideally I would need to invest in an equatorial mount (or maybe just a wedge), as well as a camera more suitable for the job.  The Meade LPI is a CMOS sensor so it's not sensitive enough for faint objects.

[Mika]

There was about -35 and full moon a couple of days ago. Could not resist taking a snap (hand held).



Taken with Canon 40D, ISO100, F/4.0, 1/1000 s exposure time. The lens was 70-200/4 L IS, which equals 112-320 with the cropped sensor. Man these cropped sensors are actually better with teles! Now, I would need a 100-400 to get better images of the moon, but I suspect it would get rather boring soon.

[Mongoose]

Very lunar.

[watsisname]

Shiny!   That's a pretty impressive shutter speed, too, never would have thought it could be shot in such a short exposure, and at ISO 100 to boot!

[Firstdragon34]

Hello Luna! I love when the moon is full because it lights up my back yard like daylight! Its more spectacular when there is a good layer of snow on the ground. 

[watsisname]

Aimed for Saturn this morning before dawn.  Fought with less-than ideal seeing conditions, haze, and dew, but it was worth it.  Saturn's pretty.

[Herra Tohtori]

That makes me think of Delenda Est...

[watsisname]

Goddess of love?   Evening star?



Nope.

What a worthless planet.

[watsisname]

My God, it's full of stars...



Canon Rebel XT with some editing in GIMP to adjust the star brightnesses and sizes.  Toned down the colors as well.



Moon, Jupiter, and Venus were pretty together in the west after sunset.

[Firstdragon34]

Oh Nice! I can see the Orion's Club and shield as well as the Orion Nebula! Thx!