Mars

A couple of nights with above average seeing allowed me to acquire these two images of Mars. These are about a month past this years very favorable opposition so I'm pretty pleased with the results. Camera used: ASI178MC with Meade 2X Barlow and Celestron 8/AVX. Each image was stacked and wavelet sharpened from the best 20% of 3000 frames acquired at 60 fps. Frame size was 1024x768. Each image is labeled with date and time. 

Mars.11072020.21_55_01

Mars.11102020.21_46_49

Jupiter

The following are several images of Jupiter acquired in October and the beginning of November. ASI178MC was used to acquire 2000 frames at 60 fps at a capture area of 1024x768. A Meade 2X Barlow was used to magnify the image. The best 20% of frames were stacked and averaged using Autostakkert! and wavelet sharpened in Paintshop Pro 2021 using unsharp masking scripts written by the author. Jupiter's low altitude and mediocre early evening Northeast seeing have made imaging Jupiter a real challenge. 

Jupiter.11042020.17_30_02

.Jupiter.10312020.18_45_56

Jupiter.10232020.19_15_17

Jupiter.10212020.18_48_05

Jupiter.10062020.19_42_30

Jupiter + satellite Io - 10/23/2020 from patio

I don't usually operate from my tree blocked, light polluted patio. However this particular evening there was a short clear sky window where Jupiter was clear of trees. Over a period of about 20 minutes I acquired eleven stills that I stitched into the Jupiter rotation video below. Celestron 8 and Meade 2X barlow were used for acquisition.  

NOTE: video has been removed but might be restored in the near future. 

Each still was averaged from 2000 frame videos processed with Autostakkert! and Paintshop Pro.  Seeing was mediocre. None the less details of Jupiter's dynamic atmosphere could be brought out using un-sharp mask scripts I have been experimenting with.  

Jupiter+Io  10/23/2020 @ 19:08 EDT

The skimpy postings to this blog prompted me to go back and review my past trove of lunar and planetary images of which there are many. It's embarrassing so few have been posted. Many of these are superior to images posted more recently.  

So, over the next few weeks I will post a few of the better images each day or two with a little commentary on how the images were acquired and processed in cases when  available. Perusal of my deep sky images suggests I should also do this for my Rick's Deep Sky Imaging blog which I plan to merge with this blog in the near future.