With only three images to work from, I used tracking and processing software that came with my new Celestron NexImager to compile those images into one.
Ta daa.
It’s not a whole lot of difference, but you can see a bit more colour and a bit more cloud pattern. The difference will become a whole lot more apparent once I get a stack of many images. And, y’know, actually take pictures with a CCD imager, and not a crappy old webcam.
Unfortunately, this is the best shot I will be getting of Saturn with my current equipment. I was hoping the bad quality was due to the poor atmosphere, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
You get what you pay for, and I paid $20 for that webcam. But, I’m going to look into a decent Barlow lens, which magnifies by 2 or 3 times, and a better webcam. I’m told the Logitech QuickCam is good for this stuff. And sometime down the line, I’ll program some software to auto-rotate the telescope (hereby known as the light bucket) via horizontal and vertical motors and take some long exposure shots of various deep sky objects. But that’s a summer project.
I was hoping for a lunar collage to upload tonight, as well as a decent picture of Saturn; unfortunately, the sky absolutely sucked tonight. In close-ups of the moon, I could literally see the blurring from high speed atmospheric winds wiggling the image of the moon around.
Oh well. Perhaps tomorrow.
I promised Mars. But, alas, no Mars, as I didn’t get much more than a yellowish blob on the camera. I’ll have to try again another night.
I promised a Double-Double. But, after waiting for the moon to get lower in the sky, the sky got too cloudy.
So, what do you get tonight? A blurry picture of Saturn, and some Lunar shots. In fact, a crapload of lunar shots. You might even say, it’s a Lunar Extravaganza!
First up, the only planet with ears:
It’s a not-so-good shot of Saturn for two reasons: One, it’s extremely close to the moon tonight, and two, poor atmospheric conditions. I think, as crappy as my webcam is, that it can do better with a good clear sky rather than the haze that was tonight.
Now, for some great lunar shots.
Coming up next? Retries of Mars and Saturn for sure, as well as shots of those elusive binaries/trinaries/coronary…. er, Double-Double. And perhaps, since I was able to see the Orion Nebula (M42) with the nude and nubile eye, I might be able to pick it up on the camera.
Something else I thought of, because of how close these shots are of the moon. The next clear night I have I’ll take a bunch of lunar pictures and compile them all into one big collage. I’ll call it: The Moon Closereth Than Evereth Seeneth Before..eth.
Tonight, feast your eyes on this spectacular shot.
Big whoop, eh? Well, that’s Vega, a blue-white main sequence star, and one of the five brightest stars in the sky. It’s in the constellation Lyra (the…Lyre?) which is north of Cygnus in our spring sky. I used this star as a stepping stone to the various deep sky objects I witnessed tonight. Unfortunately, I also learned some of the limitations of the webcam: it’s only going to be able to capture objects that I can see with the naked eye. So, what did I see tonight that you, my loyal blog reader, can’t join me in viewing pleasure? The Ring Nebula (M57), the Dumbbell nebula (M27), and a close encounter with M81 and M82 together on the wide angle lens; better known as the Bode’s and Cigar galaxies. In the city, all four of these objects are grey blobs, but the shape gives them away. Also on the “seen it tonight” list was M13: the Great Cluster in the Hercules constellation, which showed as a circular bluish haze with a few distinguishable stars. It’s a globular cluster, part of many such clusters which orbit around our Milky Way Galaxy.
Next up? Hopefully Thursday evening will be cloud-free, then I shall take pictures of Saturn, Mars, and the Moon. Also, a star NW of Vega officially named Epsilon-Lyra is apparently a marvelous quadruple star system. Its unofficial name? Double-double. Seriously. That’s astro-geek humour for ya.
Oh, bear in mind, we’re also hurtling in space towards that cold blue star pictured above. We’ll all be nice n toasty in 450,000 years. Enjoy.
I’m getting better at this. I took shots of Jupiter, and Beta Cygnus (a beautiful binary star system). My server is down briefly, but I’ll upload them probably tomorrow morning at work.
Update! My server is still down, but I’ll use xanga’s for the time being
The first is of Beta-Cygnus, a binary star system. It’s the beak of the Swan, or the bottom of the Nothern Cross. The star on the right is a Red Supergiant, and on the left is its blue-white companion of 5.11 magnitude. The supergiant is actually a binary star in itself, making this system a trinary, though it’s not discernable in amateur telescopes such as mine.
The next is of Jupiter, quite obviously. The image is flipped vertically and horizontally because of my telescopes reflection design, so do that in your head. The next images I put up will be automatically flipped twice by my webcam.
And, if I turn up the brightness, you can see some of Jupiter’s larger moons:the Gallileans.
It’s most likely that Callisto is the bottom left, Ganymede is centre, and Europa is top right. There’s a fourth, likely Io, but it’s lost in the interference. Also note that they’re all in one line; that’s their orbital plane around Jupiter.
Huh. Been a while. More stories will be coming, but in the meantime…
I’ve been experimenting with my telescope. It’s a 6 inch dobsonian reflector, with an extremely stable mount. Now, I also have a broken old webcam that I managed to rewire and salvage (the same one that took the nomad picture from past blog entries).
I put two and two together.
The result?
That may not look like much, but it’s Venus taken at 7:30am. Yes, in the morning, hence the grayish background due to daylight. No, it’s not misshaped or distorted; Venus actually goes through phases. Here, it’s at about half, as you can see. The quality is terrible, though, but that will improve with darker skies and me figuring out what the heck I’m doing.
If it’s clear tonight, I’ll take some of the Moon, Mars and possibly Jupiter if I manage to stay up that late.
Elena Havinger, a well-to-do business woman working for Media Networks was on her lunch break. Her stomach had rumbled back at the office, and thus she had decided to head out to get something to munch on. She’d been watching her figure for months now, so she deemed herself deserving of this little pleasantry.
She smiled. Her mouth was watering just thinking about the delicious fat-encrusted potatoes pieces she was about to ingest.
*SPLAT*
Elena looked in horror, her stomach already churning. A pidgeon had exploded not a few paces in front of her, which opened up a fair sized crater in the sidewalk cement.
Something was dripping from her face.
Subconsciously, she reached her hand up to brush it off.
Something was dripping from her hand.
She glanced quickly at her hand, and vomitted at the sight of a partial pidgeon head, still twitching and blinking, with its one bloated eye staring into her own.
She screamed.
* * *
Meanwhile, the Mariner’s captain was, of all things, target practicing on a downtown rooftop, armed with a Bradley sniper rifle. His target? Pidgeons.
Down-time in the Mega City forces even the best of us to find entertainment.
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