Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Yes of course.
Damien seems to produce many of his miracles with closed tube SCT around a concrete pool from less than well known astronomical places  so do any amateurs image planetary from the great sub arc sec seeing pro sites like Mauna Kea, La Palma, Cerre Tollolo etc...?
Mike |
Interesting question Mike,
When I went to Hawaii to observe with Keck II in 2008, Gary Kopff put me in contact with Doug Summers, a friend of his. Doug works at Keck HQ in Wiamea at 3,000 ft. Doug is also an amateur and has a large Obsession scope and apparently has observed with it at the summit of Mauna Kea, 14,000 ft. As it turned out I never got to meet Doug as during the day we were either at the summit or sleeping, trying to see some of the Big Island while in a sleep deprived state or in Keck II control room at Wiamea all night.
The visitors centre at the Onizuka Centre for International Astronomy is about halfway up Mauna Kea at about 7,000 ft and they do have some SCT's there for public viewing at night. When Bird last went to Hawaii I believe he assisted along with some of the IRTF crew at one of those sessions, of course Bird also got to go up to the IRTF.
Marc Delcroix, from time to time gets to use the 1 metre scope on Pic du Midi in France and has used that scope to image the planets, other than Marc I have not heard of other amateurs doing planetary imaging at altitude.
A few years ago when Bird visited Exmouth he obtained, what I gauged as the best Jupiter data obtained from Earth, Bird had classed the seeing as perfect. At the time there was much discussion on that point, especially when comparisons were made between Birds image and images from Pic du Midi.
On one of Birds visits out here to Broken Hill he brought with him the raw R, G & B data from Exmouth. At the time Paul Haese was also visiting. While it is hard to make comparisons of the quality of data based on fully processed images, running the raw data as video shows exactly what the seeing was like and hence the quality of the data rather than the abilty of the person processing the data.
The B channel is always the test of the quality of data as it is mostly the worst channel. Birds B channel, running as video, gave the impression of looking out the window of a space craft in orbit, it was rock solid extremely hi-res wall to wall detail. It was as if there was none of our atmosphere between the Earth and Jupiter.
It seems that high altitude is not as important as finding a site that presents the likelihood of stable air. The wind shear between layers of the atmosphere, when at a minimum, seems to be important. I had extended periods of stable air out here at Broken Hill through 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013. 2014 was a different kettle of fish when the jet stream was a consistent problem with a lot fewer opportunities to get hi-res data. I remain optimistic that 2015 will be a good year.
Regards
Trevor