First go at Uranus

[John K]

Decided to have a go at Uranus for the first time this morning with seeing peaking at around 6/10 here in Melbourne which is something of a miracle considering the bad weather we have been having.

Attached are three shots: at 100%, at 200% and resampled at 200%. 800 odd frames simply stacked and processed in registax.

The Earth like blue hue of the planet is amazing (I guess it's all that methane). No features visible unfortunately.

Hoping the weather improved.

John.

[iceman]

Nice work John! I'm itching to have another go at lil' blue myself soon, as it's rising earlier.

[Robert_T]

Nice one John. I've only tried Uranus once last year. Much the same result though it turned out a little more green blue.

cheers,

[ving]

nice one!
be great to get some detail hey. but there isnt much detail to be had from this planet...
:)

[middy]

Excellent work. Top stuff. :2thumbs:

[Striker]

Nice work John,

I think you should tell everyone its a Blue planetary nebula.

[mickoking]

Love the colour. Even voyager showed very little detail.

[h0ughy]

wow, nice blue planet

[ballaratdragons]

Excellent John!

It may be just my eyes but in the first and third pics (100% & resampled 200%) I'm sure I can see some slight dark blue banding (2 bands) similiar to Neptunes but closer to the equator.

Great capture :thumbsup:

[asimov]

The 2 bands are visible to me too. Do a split & check out the green channel.

Thats an amazing capture John!!

[Adrian-H]

good on ya

[Starkler]

As I recall Uranus had no surface details to see, but Neptune does, but Neptune is about half the angular size of Uranus viewed from earth.

I wonder if anyone has ever imaged detail on Neptune from earth?

[matt]

Nice image

Sure those bands aren't artefacts introduced in the processing or resampling?

Regardless.... well done:thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

Terrific!

[Lester]

Hey John,

You could be the Damian Peach of Uranus. Or as I would say the Asimov of Uranus. Need to check if any bands are actually being captured by the big Pro-telescopes. I can remember seeing a photo of it in a book (Southern Celestial Objects I think by Patrick Moore) over 30 years ago. Uranus was green with 2 brown EQ belts.

[asimov]

Interesting, most hubble shots show no detail. I find it strange that the 'artifact insertion gods' would decide to put 2 bands on there...Stranger things have happened I guess..

[matt]

So you're sure they're not artefacts John?

[slice of heaven]

Nice capture, we never see enough of the distant planets being captured.

A couple of years ago , the Keck scope with AO grabbed some images showing some detail, the rings and moons.
Apart from that the only other detail from amateur scopes I've seen has been the moons.

[matt]

Not even the Keck... captured the bands, eh?:whistle:

[Lester]

Just thinking, doesn't Uranus have its poles tilted at some unusually high tilt, so we may only see the polar region, EQ belts if present may not be facing us.

[matt]

Ah ha!!!!

You might have nailed it Lester. Good work.

Let Asi and Ken know:thumbsup::D

[Lester]

Yep. Uranus has its poles tilted at 98 degrees, with one pole continually facing the sun.

[John K]

Thanks for all the comments guys, interesting stuff.

I was sure very surprised to see any kind of detail on the disk, so it is possibly artifacts, as I too do not believe that Uranus shows any surface detail.

I did as John suggested and looked at the green channel and there is something there, artifact, belts etc.

Interestingly enough it appears that the poles of Uranus are not pointing at the sun at the moment and we have a nice equatorial plane view. I used the JPL simulator to find that out. See here:

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

or for Uranus today:

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=799&vbody=399&month=7&day=15&year=2006&hour=00&minute=00&rfov=2&fovmul=-1&bfov=30&porbs=1&showsc=1

[slice of heaven]

http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/news/science/uranus/


:shrug:

[matt]

interesting....

I thought you meant the detail it caught was "the rings and moons" only.

Some surface detail there also. I'd imagine you'd need something like the Keck though to see those details. I could be wrong but I guess it's beyond the capabilities of the average backyard scope?

[Lester]

Well John,

at least you got the colour correct.

[slice of heaven]

At the rate the planet imagers on this site are moving, probably not till next week. :lol:

I dug through my old computer last night for a couple of links I saved.
The first one I think is a fairly honest shot from 4 years ago with the moons.

http://www.kk-system.co.jp/Alpo/kk02/u020719z.htm

This second one is from a couple of years ago, it created a bit of discussion on another site on the processing of artifacts in/out of the final image :shrug:
In steps 2 and 3 you can see banding before the noise is removed.
http://www.geocities.com/rolo0235/PlanetaryImagingbyRolandoChavez.htm l

Scroll to the bottom of the last link and there's an image of Neptune as well.

[ving]

gee slice, looks like we have a ways to go then :)