Posts Made By: Jason Higley

Jupiter and a shadow transit of what I believe is the moon Europa from this morning

http://setisociety.org/JUPITER-MVI_1076quicregrox.jpg

My first shadow transit image, yay! Same gear stats as always except the seeing was very good! No computer present to record (only the Canon A530 Point-n-shoot camera afocal at a 10mm EP and a 2x Ultima Barlow (not maxed on the camera's 4x zoom.) 6" Criterion RV-6, Orion SteadyPix camera mount, Registax 4, Roxio Photosuite 5, Apple Quicktime Pro (to convert the camera's video file to something Registax will accept.)

Thanks for looking, Jason H.

Stars in Cygnus (make sure to expand to full size in your browser to see the Coathanger, upside-down.)

http://setisociety.org/Cygnus-via-CanonA530.jpg

Camera only mounted on a Home Depot mechanical timer. The stack is 4 frames of 15 second exposures from a Canon A530 point-n-shoot camera.) I was able to make and attach a very light mounting fixture from PVC, aluminum and stainless steel bolts which permits a more secure and greater degree of motion for camera pointing (by itself it's not pointable to all parts of the sky, however I think that by using this in combination with a gorilla-pod one should be able to do a whole sky mosaic with only parts from a home supply store [beware to not touch the live electrical wires within the timer!!!] and a department store camera.)

Here are shots of the setup:

http://setisociety.org/IMG_1145.JPG

http://setisociety.org/IMG_1146.JPG

http://setisociety.org/IMG_1147.JPG

http://setisociety.org/IMG_1148.JPG

http://setisociety.org/IMG_1149.JPG

http://setisociety.org/IMG_1150.JPG

Where the wing-nut is is where the camera goes (it's a quarter-20
screw). You can see the differences in positions between each frame
of the head. If I want to go near Polaris, it's necessary to use a
gorilla-pod (see google images "gorrilla pod".)

Regards, Jason H.

Hi, I've created a table that lets one know when a bright/naked-eye-visible parent star of an exoplanet is transiting a viewer's meridian (I'm in Central FL) for a particular month at:

http://setisociety.org/JULY-MERIDIAN-TRANSITS-EXOSYSTEMS.pdf

Obviously one cannot see a planet transit when looking at these stars with their eyes, but it's fun to know that they have planets orbiting them and that they are a little easier to find with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. I used NASA/JPL'S NEW WORLDS ATLAS, CDS'S SIMBAD and Starry Night Pro to derive the information. All transit times are for Eastern Time which is UTC -5 hours (-4 hours during Daylight Savings Time in the winter), this listing should let one know if they can see one of the stars listed from the Northern hemisphere during early July, then they can consult their planetarium software or the NEW WORLDS ATLAS for Right Ascension and Declination (i.e. their sky positions) relative to their location. To use the table after July 1, reduce the times by 4 minutes earlier for each night after the July 1'st. I hope to make a table for each month.

Keep searching, Jason H.

I made this GIF 2 frame movie of Saturn's pole (the frames of which had recently been on the Cassini raw images website.) It's important to maximize the window in your browser to minimize the compression noise and get the full effect.

http://setisociety.org/saturnrotatediffilters.GIF

Notice the cloud trough near the pole. The frames are through 2 different filters sets which is why new details jump out between frames.

This next 2 frame I took a single Cassini raw frame of Saturn's moon Janus and processed it to bring out the details in the shadows (and some charged particle noise too.)

http://setisociety.org/Janusoutoftheshadows3.GIF

You are among the first humans to see that real estate! Jason H.

I've been wondering what the GRS would look like in this $50 camera

http://setisociety.org/Jupiter5July08MVI1158L1pt4rox.jpg

After the July 4th festivities, I saw on the Sky and Tel website that the GRS had transited, and by the time I set my stuff up I was able to catch it just before going over the limb. Although faint in my shot, I also caught Io and Europa, and according to Starry Night Pro, the moon Io is the one closer to Jupiter, the other one is Europa. Regarding the seeing, even though it was July 5th AM, there were still one or two patriotic souls blowing off their fireworks off from time to time, and I could still smell gun powder in the air. There was a large cloud deck overhead too, and I couldn't see most of the stars, but the ones I could see were low and flickering like a candle in the wind. Jupiter was right at the edge of the cloud deck for most of the abbreviated session. I could see some occasional minor roils in the video, but Registax seems to have saved the day (again). I started with around 680 frames. I used the same setup, a Canon A530 w/4x optical zoom, afocal via the Criterion RV-6, 10mm EP, 2x Ultima Barlow.

Regards, Jason H.

I don't know if they'll ever get around to posting an exposure-corrected version of this, but here are some neat clouds/ghostly sprites dancing around Saturn's pole in these raw frames I just downloaded from the Cassini/JPL/NASA raw images website and strung together in Microsoft moviemaker:

http://setisociety.org/SATURNPOLEMOVIE.wmv

Regards, Jason H.

Awhile ago I posted some deep space shots from the SOHO solar observation satellite and think I mentioned here that the Beehive is also visible from SOHO, but I don't recall posting a shot of it, so here are 16 frames from last
July stacked (primitive as they may be, don't forget that the Sun is very nearby, just to the right and cropped out and the Beehive wasn't visible at night to Earthbound telescopes at the time the shot was taken, and the camera has a tiny objective.)

http://setisociety.org/16FRAMESOHOBEEHIVEROXI.jpg

Regards, Jason H.

Tonight's experiment (July 30 2008)
Jupiter during Io transit afocal via 7.5mm EP (no barlow)

http://setisociety.org/jupiterMVI_1172sav2rox.jpg

I used a higher power EP this time, a new Parks Gold Series 7.5mm eyepiece at the 6" Criterion, camera was the Canon Powershot A530 with 4x optical zoom used in video mode, with a new cheapo generic $7.99 2 gig SD card (a little scary to let a session ride on an unknown commodity.) No laptop/PC present to record. I probably could boost the scale a little with the barlow, but there's that much less glass and weight in the way for now, so I'll do a few more experiments with just the eyepiece when the clouds open up again and the seeing is better.

Regards, Jason H.

I hand-aligned the 7 frames of this movie in Adobe to see if my images caught Io in the transit from July 30th

Here's the movie of Jupiter rotating

http://setisociety.org/JupiterJuly30movie100th.GIF

and an even faster version of it

http://setisociety.org/JupiterJuly30movie10th.GIF

I previously posted this shot which showed the shadow at:

http://setisociety.org/jupiterMVI_1172sav2rox.jpg

and I saw that other people online had posted images of Io from the same night/transit, and I was wondering if I had caught it too (with the shadow so prominent, Io was curiously missing (or camouflaged) in mine, but in the animation if one looks in the red cloud band at the end of the animation one might barely make it out (notice it's moving at a different speed than Jupiter's rotation :^)

A jillion frames of video from the Canon Powershot A530 point-n-shoot camera scrunched down to 7 frames using Registax 4, Roxio Photosuite 5, Adobe PhotoDeluxe and GIF Construction Set Professional, 6" Criterion newtonian scope, AFOCAL! at the eyepiece of a Parks Gold Series 7.5 mm, no barlow used.

Thanks for looking, regards Jason H.

Jupiter

http://setisociety.org/jupiterMVI_1218regonepointfiverox.jpg

Just reporting on tonight's experiment. Even though I speculate that the Canon Powershot A530 already has an IR blocking filter, I decided to try an additional Lumicon IR blocking filter (in case it has a slightly different spectral response.) I don't see an improvement, but I also was messing with other things too so the verdict is still out on that one. This time I used the new Parks 7.5 mm Gold Series with a Japan made 2x Celestron Ultima barlow in the Criterion RV-6 (a 6" newtonian) and it was way way overkill on magnification when combined with the 7.5, so much so that it left me with poor quality videos (even though the seeing was good) and only permitted me to stack a small amount of frames. Also, Registax didn't seem to like the larger scale objects in the videos and actually lost the tracking on some of them (it hasn't done that in awhile.) I basically have to decide whether it's worth using the barlow, because the overmagnification is causing too much darkness (but I'll also have to try it without the IR filter). I didn't adjust the exposure on purpose) and here in this dark room I can see Io to the left, but I'm guessing when you read this it will be difficult to see Jupiter in a well lit room (let alone Io), however whenever I tried to adjust the exposure, it just made Jupiter look very un-natural, so I just left it alone to show what happened and reduced the overall size to 75% of the original.

Regards, Jason H.