Jupiter 08/09/2020

Back in MA from MD it sucks that I have to quarantine for 14 days but that's life in the era of the Covid-19 virus. I can't get to my favorite local park site with Jupiter and Saturn in prime time. At least I can catch a few imaging glimpses during the short window when the gas giants are between increasingly view blocking trees in front of my apartment terrace. Below is an image of Jupiter taken just after midnight 08/09/2020. 

Seeing was pretty mediocre and building tremors from air conditioners throughout this wood frame building contribute to the blurring and misshaping of Europa. It also didn't help that polar alignment was pretty rough compared to when at a site where Polaris is visible. 

The real value to this exercise was honing in on best settings for imaging the gas giants with the ASI178MC with the 2X Barlow lens. To the east I noticed the gibbous moon with Mars to its right looking quite bright giving me something to look forward to over the next few weeks of planetary imaging. 

Thankfully my quarantine ends right around new moon liberating to travel to my favorite darkish sites for DSO and gas giant imaging. Crossing fingers for clear skies then. 

Jupiter with Europa

Jupiter and Saturn 07/26/2020

Jupiter with Callisto's shadow and Europa to the right. 

Saturn

Jupiter and Saturn

It was July 19th. I finally got out with the new ASI178MC planetary imager. Actually, its the first night I got successful pictures. The previous July 15 was a total bust because I used the wrong imaging format and to short exposure times.

Anyway, this time I imaged in Raw16 and RGB24 paying attention to gain, exposure time and the histogram. For each image 1000 frames were acquired at 1600x1200 format.  Images were projected with a 2X Barlow. Back in Massachusetts, I'm in Maryland for July, I have a 3X Barlow I'll try in the future. I'll also consider a smaller imaging format to get a faster frame rate.

Jupiter 7/19/2020

Saturn 7/19/2020