Mar and Saturn in good to excellent seeing (Now with better Mars)
Last night couple of the guys came down to do some DSO imaging at Clayton and I was in two minds as to whether I should do some DSO imaging or planetary. I decided I would wait until dark and just test the seeing before making up my mind. The predictors had all seemed to indicate that seeing would not be that great, so I decided that a wait and see approach was going to work best.
At around 9pm after cooling the C14 I slewed to Sirius and what I saw shocked me. The seeing was that good that I saw solid diffraction rings from a solid star that was Sirius. I could detect little if any movement and I called out to the guys to come and take a look, first through the diagonal then straight through via cranning ones neck; all at around 488x The straight through view was spectacular and I wondered what the night would hold. Mars was still too low and Saturn had not even risen.
When Mars did rise high enough we were treated to a lovely visual of Syrtis Major and the pole and tine little dark regions near the pole. I quickly setup to capture some data after waiting a short while from the first viewing. Mars was still being blocked by the slide of roof of the observatory and the light from Mars was only hitting half the mirror. There was some wind and this was making Mars wobble a little, not bad seeing but not like I had seen a while ago higher up in the sky. Overall seeing on Mars never got much better than 7/10. However it is very low still and I was happy with this result.
Saturn on the other hand climbed higher out of the soup and presented a real show. Visually the live feed was still but the scope was being buffeted by wind. There are storms present in the NEB and there is a dark spot on the border of the NEB and where the Dragon storm was last year. In the red channel you can see the octagon shape belt at the pole. This was a nice night of quality seeing. Click here for the Saturn image at the site.
Edit, this is the last run on Mars for the night. It turned out to be better than expected. Click here for image
Last edited by Paul Haese; 19-03-2012 at 11:28 AM.
Congrats Paul on this most successful session, Mars is quite nice but Saturn is outstanding, a fine result indeed. Super resolution that maybe, could only be improved by slightly reducing the overall capture time to 6 mins, which I think in seeing like this, would define even better the storm remnant & NEB cloud structure.
thanks guys for the comments, all very much appreciated.
JJJ it was a very nice night but a little windy at times. Those are the breaks though.
Trev I take your point and will reduce timing to reduce blurring. I have been imaging at 6.5 minutes but could reduce the red time to make up for the blue time.
Steve, while I thank you for the wonderful comment I reckon Trevs image last week was better, or Damians for the last 10 years is worlds beyond mine. If you have not looked at those I encourage you to do so. Trevs is spectacular and Damians images are ones to aspire toward.
Danny you are always welcome. I hope you came away from the night with some nice data to process, but I think the tops of the night was splitting Antares and the companion and seeing the greenish glow of the companion in the diffraction rings of Antares. Or maybe seeing Sirius like I described. Or better still sharing it with my mates.
wow - very impressive Paul and i love the colours and detail. I wish i could get to the level you are at with this one fine day. i certainly appreciate the processing you have done
They are magic Paul, Really dig the colours that define the banding & details on the Saturnian body especially, betterer than Casinni images Top Show !
very nice result Paul - spectacular. We're going to need such good seeing for the next Jupiter - I don't think it will get above 34 degrees altitude down this way. Regards Ray
thanks Bob, but I think Cassini images are just within another class of their own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shiraz
very nice result Paul - spectacular. We're going to need such good seeing for the next Jupiter - I don't think it will get above 34 degrees altitude down this way. Regards Ray
Yes this in itself will be a test of Clayton. Can that site produce great seeing on Jupiter? I suspect it will be problematic as Mars was wobbling around and flickering at 45 degrees in good seeing. Thing is to make the best of these planets.
Trev I take your point and will reduce timing to reduce blurring. I have been imaging at 6.5 minutes but could reduce the red time to make up for the blue time.
Just had another thought Paul, you could use the new derotate function in WinJUPOS to create new versions of your 3 channels that are derotated to mid point of the G channel or maybe even just derotate to the mid point of each channel, which would still effectively be well within 6 mins overall.
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I have been imaging at 6.5 minutes but could reduce the red time to make up for the blue time.
