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Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 11:35 AM
Hello all. I've just joinmed and I'm quite new to all this so I figure I'm entitled to at least one dumb question. I have just built a barn door star tracker mount for my camera. I was testing it for the first time last night. As it was just a rough test to check how it worked (so-so as it turned out, gears kept jamming) I wasn't paying too much attention to celestial coordinates and stuff, just pointing it at Jupiter because it was the easiest thing to focus on and letting it rip. When checking the pics this morning there is this bright green object close to Jupiter (see pic). I've never seen or captured anything that green in the sky before (usually just reds, whites, yellows and blues). Any clues as to what it could be? I was shooting at about 2am in Newcastle (32S, 151E). It shows up in the same place in the sky in a number of photos, so it not a camera error. It's really got me intrigued, any insights appreciated. Cheers

astronut
18-08-2009, 11:53 AM
Eddie,
I'm having trouble enlarging your image.
My guess, being a wide angle shot, it could be Neptune.:)

pgc hunter
18-08-2009, 12:16 PM
I looked it up on Cartes Du Ciel and Neptune is nowhere near the location of that green thing.

Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 12:18 PM
Thanks for reply. Yeah I couldn't open my pic from the website either. Have tried sending it again a bit smaller. It's attached to this message. I thought Neptune was blue? I also thought about Uranus, which I understand is green, but didn't think I'd be seeing that with just a 50mm lens on a two minute exposure. If it is either of those two I'm really excited. Jagged two planets in the one pic on my first go! (like I planned it... ;-)

Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 12:22 PM
Alright that didn't work either. I'm just making a normal garden variety jpg file, flattened, and it's not going up. Any suggestions from successful posters as to what I'm doing wrong or as to which format I should be using?

JimmyH155
18-08-2009, 12:24 PM
LGM's on holiday from Mars??:lol:

Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 12:29 PM
Here's a closer crop, highlighting both the green thing and the tracking issues of my camera mount.

Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 12:43 PM
Think I've worked it out, Saturn Nebula, (NGC 7009), wasn't maked on the original map I was using. Hubble pic attached shows it does have a faint greenish tinge :-) Cheers and thanks for replies.

pgc hunter
18-08-2009, 12:49 PM
It's not the Saturn Nebula. THat's located a few degrees to the west.

Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 01:16 PM
Thanks for feedback pgc hunter, does cartes du ciel give any clues as to what it could be?

bloodhound31
18-08-2009, 01:27 PM
Looks like the brightness of Jupiter is casting a reflection inside the glass surfaces of your lens.

Baz.

pgc hunter
18-08-2009, 01:39 PM
Nope. Absolutely no DSO, comet or anything in that location.

Eddie O'Reilly
18-08-2009, 06:05 PM
Bingo bloodhound31. I've looked at the other pics more closely, the green thing moves slightly against the other stars, it's always the mirror of where Jupiter is from the centre of the image. It was hard to notice before because the tracking and vibration was so bad. Mystery solved. Thank you. So there you go, you don't need a long neck to feel like a goose ;-)
Cheers