Posts Made By: Jason Higley

Saturn - the first time I've used the Canon SX-100 for a planet shot

http://setisociety.org/SATURN22JAN08-MVI_0587REG3SLROX.jpg

26mm Meade Super Plossl eyepiece, 10 camera optical zoom 2x ultima
barlow, Criterion RV-6 scope

And 12 million light years away the same point-n-shoot camera (which is limited to 15 second exposures) could see some of the irregular galaxy M82 in Ursa Major

http://setisociety.org/M82-16FRAMESCROP.jpg

28mm Edmund Plossl eyepiece, Criterion RV-6 scope

Both shots were taken this morning (Jan. 22,09, I made a typo on the Saturn file name.) By the time that Saturn shot was taken there was frost on my eyepiece box and car and it was below freezing locally (I'm 12 miles North of Orlando.)

Regards, Jason H.

I made this animation using the Palomar DSS surveys taken over many decades of Barnard's star

http://setisociety.org/barnardsstardecades.gif

It's only 6 light years away and as you can see has a very high motion relative to us.

Regards, Jason H.

I'm not the first to do it, but I made the following movie (~4.7 megs) using online images of Galileo's drawings of sunspots in the summer of 1612

http://setisociety.org/Galileo-Sunspot-Movie.wmv

Happy 400th birthday of the telescope!

Regards, Jason H.

Brighter, bigger reprocess.

http://setisociety.org/saturnMVI_0719reg1-br-140.jpg

Jason H.

Jason Higley said:

Here's Saturn from tonight (the first time I've used the Criterion RV-8 for a planet shot)

http://setisociety.org/Saturn-21Feb09-MVI_0719reg1.jpg

(afocal, no computer present, Canon SX-100 point-n-shoot 10x optical zoom, 26 mm Meade Super Plossl EP, 2x Japanese-made Celestron Ultima Barlow.)

And here's the weakest comet Lulin you'll ever see (which is why I didn't list it in the subject line.) No scope/camera only, its a very wide field, it's only (4)15 second subs that I had to stomp the light pollution out of.

Comet Lulin
http://setisociety.org/Comet-Lulin-21Feb09.jpg

Regards, Jason H.

Tonight I downloaded the new Registax 5 and tried it out on a bigger Saturn run (the following image is only 16k)

http://setisociety.org/SATURNMVI_0709R51SL.jpg

That run started off around 1.46 gigs from my last good session Feb. 21; I originally couldn't use that run in Registax 4 because of its size (~1 gig limit) but was able to load it in the newly released Registax 5.

I started off with 1626 frames and ended up with 1466 (by manually removing frames) and didn't re-size it as the detail was a little less on that run, but it seems like the extra frames helped the color a lot (I didn't touch the saturation.)

Post-registax processing done in Roxio Photosuite 5. I have a lot to learn about the new Registax (not that I knew anything about the old one :^) but some of the new features do look interesting.

Criterion RV8, Canon Powershot SX-100 w/10 optical zoom, 26mm Meade Super Plossl, 2x Ultima Barlow.

Regards, Jason H.

This Saturn is from March 7th in the a.m.

http://setisociety.org/saturnMVI_0904r5s1rox.jpg

The seeing was very good! There was no water vapor, transparency was very good, the Moon was blazing, 2848 frames (out of 3295) stacked in Registax 5, Criterion RV-8, Canon Powershot SX 100 using 10x zoom, 26mm Meade Super Plossl EP, 2x Celestron Ultima Barlow.

Regards, Jason Higley

I had to radically compress this video that was originally 30 frames per second down to 15 frames per second and an original file of almost 300 megs into a file ~4.6 megs so that I could upload it under the 5 meg limit of my service provider
, so with that in mind, here's a video I shot of Kepler lifting off on a Delta II rocket from a vantage point near Cape Canaveral

http://setisociety.org/Kepler-Lift-Off-smal.wmv

The dialog is between me and my daughter. Make sure to see the flare-out at the end.

Here is the launch pad immediately after liftoff

http://setisociety.org/Kepler-launch-tower-closer.jpg

and here is where we were with rocket smoke plume

http://setisociety.org/Kepler-Lauch-Site-Lights.jpg

Regards, Jason H.

At ~2.6 light hours away, 19.78 A.U. distance (~1.8 billion miles away) and 3.6 arc seconds in diameter, here's tiny afocal Uranus from last November

http://setisociety.org/uranusMVI_0019-1818frslpt6rox.jpg

This time I used 1818 frames from the Canon, so I think at least the color is pretty good. Only pushed 0.6 of 1 wavelets slider on Registax 5, re-sized up 1.5x and cropped.

Regards, Jason H.

Hope this isn't too O.T. (but the shots are within the "Solar System" :^) On a recent trip to Montreal around the Earth Hour event here's some Astronomy-related stuff that I saw:

Statue of Nicolas Copernicus outside Dow Planetarium (originally created for Expo '67)
http://setisociety.org/Nicholas-Copernicus.jpg

French banner for IYA '09 outside the planetarium
http://setisociety.org/IYA-09-French-banner-Planetarium-Montreal.jpg

SUBWAY IYA '09 AD
http://setisociety.org/IYA09-SUBWAY-AD-MONTREAL.jpg

Show banners of those offered at the Planetarium
http://setisociety.org/Notre-galaxie.jpg

A very neat Sun Dial outside planetarium that adjusts for the seasons.
http://setisociety.org/Super-Sun-dial-full-arc.jpg

Here's the Sundial with its gnomon
http://setisociety.org/Super-Sun-dial-with-gnomon.jpg

and here are the months
http://setisociety.org/Super-Sun-Dial.jpg

Waiting for the free light-pollution lecture inside the Planetarium (note the classic projector, reminds me of the old Hayden planetarium's)
http://setisociety.org/PLANETARIUM-DOME-MONTREAL.jpg

Speakers during the lecture (very low-light as a slide show is going on
http://setisociety.org/DURING-LIGHT-POLLUTION-LECTURE-MONTREAL.jpg

DURING EARTH HOUR - Montreal was a participating city, but during Earth hour the light pollution was so bad that I could not see the sword of Orion with my eyes!!! This is a shot of people looking through some telescopes brought by members of the planetarium astronomy club (400 members) at Saturn (the seeing was very very bad and the ecliptic being very low from that latitude didn't help.)

http://setisociety.org/DURING-EARTH-HOUR-MONTREAL-PLANETARIUM.jpg

Just noting that the night before I also saw the regular Notre Galaxie planetarium show the night before and it was very nicely done. I saw the French version but they also offer shows in English. If you're in town, check them out.

Regards, Jason H.

A Venus I shot earlier today

http://setisociety.org/VENUS-MVI_1109SL1roxi.jpg

Shot during the daytime around 12 to 1 p.m.'ish. Converted to black & white (showed more contrast that way than the blue sky.) Stacked around 125 frames in Registax 5, Afocal in the 8" Criterion using a 10mm EP and Canon A590 w/4x zoom in video mode.

Regards, Jason H.