Neptune & Triton with spot

[ags_ (Phil)]

Neptune & Triton during a spell of only fair seeing showing a bright spot or two but additional images needed to verify and measure positions when conditions improve. Then lucky to have another session the following day unfortunately the seeing was very poor early in the evening so no chance of a central spot but improved later showing a bright spot near the limb, still awaiting better seeing to accurately measure it's position although it does appear to be near the previous day at L190

[Atmos (Colin)]

Very nice Phil, don't often see images of Neptune.

[ags_ (Phil)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

Very nice Phil, don't often see images of Neptune.

Thanks Colin, nothing much else to look at, Saturn has been very poor especially if you want to get fine detail in the rings and Uranus is still early morning. At least with Neptune and Uranus there is not much detail to find apart from the odd storm

[Dennis]

Wow - tremendous work, that is pretty darned amazing.

Cheers

Dennis

[Stonius (Markus)]

Originally Posted by ags_

At least with Neptune and Uranus there is not much detail to find apart from the odd storm

I don't know - are those dark bands in the northern hemisphere cloud detail?

Markus

[ags_ (Phil)]

Originally Posted by Stonius

I don't know - are those dark bands in the northern hemisphere cloud detail?

Markus

Hi Markus, yes those bands are real but as for detail more like a hint of shading is all than can be expected. Neptune is 2.4" dia and under excellent conditions my scope is capable of 0.085"/pixel or 12 pixels per arc/sec so a maximum of 30 pixels across Neptune. To see any individual high contrast feature in very steady seeing at least 4/5 pixels are usually needed so on Neptune only features 20% of it's dia can be reliably seen. That's why at least 2 images with a rotational gap during a session are required to prove any new feature is real and over several different days.

Regards, Phil

[andyc (Andy)]

That's tremendous detail Phil. Shows what a big scope and a great deal of skill can achieve. Out of interest, what settings do you use for something as faint as Neptune?

[ags_ (Phil)]

Originally Posted by andyc

That's tremendous detail Phil. Shows what a big scope and a great deal of skill can achieve. Out of interest, what settings do you use for something as faint as Neptune?

Thanks, I use a 610nm longpass filter (R + IR), 10fps, 900 secs.
close to max gain 4600. I then use ninox to upscale 5/2 and select 70% and align with rgistax

[pluto (Hugh)]

Wow, that's really impressive!
I'd be happy to get that much detail on Mars, let alone Neptune!

[hickny (Peter)]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012fbvt