With all of the main planets, and Pluto, up in the course of a night, I decided to have some fun with the 8" Dob and a couple of cameras last week without getting too serious about it all. All planets were captured between sunset and sunrise, and (with the exception of Pluto) observed visually at roughly the same time they were imaged. All showed some defining feature even with the seeing varying from decent to rubbish. It was quite entertaining though not as spectacular as the great planet parade of 2022.
All planets shown at the same image scale and relative apparent size, except Pluto, which is obviously just a dot in most telescopes. Orientation as they appeared relative to horizon.
I'll follow up with some notes on each object capture further down.
2nd capture of the night, ASI715 and ZWO850 IR pass. I didn't even attempt the V band with it being so low in the west, maybe I should have. To my surprise, I noticed some darker areas in the gibbous planetary disk in the NIR. Initially I thought the darker shadings surely had to be artifacts from diffraction at this long wavelength, but a WinJupos simulation shows a reasonably good match in several areas. In particular, I do think the dark patch extending out from the terminator right of centre is real. The brighter area north (right) of it is Caloris Planitia, of which I might be inclined to call this a capture of sorts. The seeing was better than I thought.
Visually, the phase was apparent but no surface detail.
1st capture of the night, minutes after sunset, and at a decent altitude.
Clouds detectable to various degree in absolutely every mode including visual with a Wratten #47 violet filter, and possibly even without the filter, though that was not conclusive enough for me to call an observation. Stunning views.
Images captured were violet/dark blue (W47 stacked with ZWO L to block the W47's IR leak), UV (Baader U 350), IR (ZWO 850), and V band (colour and grayscale, ZWO L). ASIs 715 and 178.
Final capture of the night. An approaching front was making itself known with much poorer seeing conditions than the earlier part of the night, also affecting Uranus' and Jupiter's observation. Still, some surface detail was visible, and able to be captured.
Poor seeing, low altitude, tired observer. Shortening exposure times (to chase some lucky shots) didn't really work. Not something I'd normally bother with, but see subject of thread. GRS and some belts observable despite the crappy conditions.
3rd capture of the night. Viewing not bad, but seeing no longer quite as good as earlier in the evening. As with Jupiter, shortening exposures didn't do much but increase noise.
Captured just before Jupiter at a similar altitude and under the same conditions. Disk discernable but not very sharp, and slightly distorted, both visually and in the image. Appeared somewhat larger than Neptune. Colour difference not apparent visually, but the two ice giants were observed several hours apart.
An entertaining star-hop with the 8x50 finder got me to the field in Capricorn, where the ASI294 managed to pick it up, as confirmed by Stellarium. Another shot the following night to show the movement would have been nice but it's spring after all.
Thanks for sharing your epic adventures around the solar system! It’s very very rare you can get good conditions for a full set but you’ve done very well to still come up with some very nice captures. Venus & Mercury is particularly impressive. Great stuff!
Enjoyable sequence of planetary shots Mirko!
Regardless of the seeing and quick scout through the pack, you’ve presented a great show of relative sizes and the colour range in each.
Mercury is very impressive as with Venus/ always a nice view when you get the chance to take the time, and I’m really liking the far outer planets too/ very cool to see them make it to the show/ just puts everything in perspective- our own solar system to be in awe of.
Well done mate.
Anth
Thank you Steve, Jeff, Dave and Anth! I am reasonably happy with the evening planets of the set. The biggest surprise there was indeed Mercury. Next time conditions are like that I'll pull out the 12" and put an ADC in it as well. Not holding my breath for that, though.
