Uranus and moons Ariel, Umbriel, Titania & Oberon

[Dennis]

Hello,

I managed to thwart the seemingly eternal presence of cloud layers hovering over Brisbane of late, to grab a few images of Uranus on Friday 23rd Oct 2010. Using the C9.25 F10 with a Tak Extender x1.6 (efl 3760mm at F16) I took a series of 30 sec and 5 sec Luminance frames for the moons, followed by a shorter series of 3 sec LRGB frames for Uranus.

Uranus is 51,118.0 km in diameter, some 19.2 AU from the earth and can be found “in” Pisces at Magnitude 5.75, with an apparent size of 3.6".

According to Starry Night Pro 6, the brighter satellites are:

Ariel: m14.4, sep 4.5”
Umbriel: m15.0, sep 16.0”
Titania: m14.0, sep 30.2”
Oberon: m14.2, sep 41.0”

I used the 30 sec exposures to blend in Umbriel, Titania & Oberon and the 5 sec exposures to blend in Ariel, lost in the glow of Uranus on the 30 sec frames. I then created an LRGB frame using the 3 second exposures and blended the whole lot together in CS5. As a result, the relative brightness of these objects has been distorted.

Miranda at m16.53 was located some 4.1” from Uranus and 1.5” from Ariel, but I didn’t manage to resolve this fainter moon. Oh well, one day…

Thanks for looking!

Dennis

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Outstanding image Dennis!

Well done.

Peter

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Brilliant stuff, such detail, and one thing I am missing is the detail. Well done.

[Dennis]

Thanks Peter and Malcolm!

It took me almost 2 hours to set up and get everything running, cooled down and optimised as I haven’t had the rig out for seemingly ages! This weekend looked promising on the weather report last night, but its looking a little ordinary now, which is a pity as an NEO, 2003 UV11, is due to make a close pass tonight.

Cheers

Dennis

[Quark (Trevor)]

What a fine peace of work here Dennis, testament to your patience and tenacity to track down and record the members of the outer Solar System. Congrats on your achievement and most excellent presentation of this data.

Regards
Trevor

[DavidU (Dave)]

Congratulations Dennis, super effort.

[Clayton]

Great work, and excellent presentation Dennis

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

Excellent job Dennis!
I love seeing the images of the outer gas ones.
Your presentation is super!

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

Great capture and lovely presentation, it's always nice to see your work Dennis

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Absolutely fantastic stuff.

[Suzy]

Wow Dennis that really is an amazing picture! And as others have said, superbly presented . Thank you for sharing that with us.

[Dennis]

I haven’t been very active of late, either indoors on the Forum or outdoors with the ‘scope, so I appreciate you stopping by and writing those nice words – thank you!

One of my goals is to record Miranda, so I’ll keep plugging away at this project as I learn something new from each imaging session and the post capture processing effort.

Watching the moons “develop” in the post capture processing is like watching my first B&W print slowly materialise in the developer tray in my first photographic darkroom session. Much like typewriters, I guess that story is one for the older guys!

Cheers

Dennis

[Ric]

That's awesome Dennis

The colours and attention to details is superb.

Keep shooting for Miranda, with the skills you gain from each session it's only a matter of time.

Cheers