Various Planetary and Solar Images, Late July, 1999

Note: to view all of the detail in these images, you may need to adjust the brightness and contrast controls on your monitor! Generally, increasing brightness reveals subtle details.
The image at right is my first successful CCD image of the solar disk. The ST-7E camera's shortest exposure time is only .11 seconds, which leads to serious over-exposure even with a solar filter on the telescope. To cut the light, I used both a moon filter and a polarizing filter, which resulted in light levels around 50% of chip saturation.

The sun image has been sharpened and had its contrast adjusted.
Solar disc, FC-60mm Takahashi refractor .11 seconds
ST-7E ~7pm July 30, 1999 (click for larger image)
The image at right is ma collage of six images. I used The Sky's Mosaic feature to line up the images. For this image, I used an overlap of 10% per image, and I just barely got full coverage. I later did a second sequence with 20% overlap, in color, but those images have not been processed yet: an RGB collage is pretty time consuming.

The image has been sharpened and I have adjusted the contrast and brightness of the individual images to get them to match.

This and the following image were taken through the Baader solar film sold by Astro-Phyics.

Solar disc, FC-125 5" Takahashi refractor 
Collage of six images, each .11 seconds
ST-7E 10am 3/25/00 (click for larger image)

This is my first successful color image of the sun. My prior attempts were not nearly this good. I had trouble with banding in the images, which has been fixed by using a higher-quality cable between the camera and the computer.

I applied quite a bit of sharpening to this image, perhaps too much. My goal was to make the sunspots stand out clearly.

Solar disc, FC-125 5" Takahashi refractor 
RGB images, red .11 seconds, green .23 seconds, blue .3 seconds
ST-7E 10am 3/25/00 (click for larger image)

The two images of Saturn are also my first-ever of that solar system object. The first image has had only contrast and sharpening, and shows planetary bands and the Cassini division. I took it with my C8, using a 2X TeleVue Barlow and the ST-7E.

The second Saturn image shows the dangers of going too far with image processing. It doesn't really show more detail, but it looks false in the extreme, as some portions of the rings have disappeared!
Saturn, ~4am July 31, seconds ST-7E C8


Similar exposure, too much deconvolution!
Here are a few images; I will have to find some time to document them later!

The image of Jupiter on the left is the raw data, with contrast adjust for clarity. The image on the right is a highly processed one which brings out details not obviously present in the original. Like the Saturn images, this was taken on the C8 with the 2X Barlow. This was far and away the best image of Jupiter of the night, with significantly more cloud detail than the other exposures -- pure luck! The processed image brings out a Jovian moon at top. The seeing was particularly good.
Jupiter, ~4am July 31, 1999, .11 seconds ST-7E C8
Left: raw image, contrast adjusted to show detail.
Right: Image processed with Maxim/DL deconvolution
This image has been enhanced with the Lucy-Richardson deconvolution from SBIG's CCDSharp software. note the large image I get with the Mewlon 210, which is an f/11.5 instrument. Visually, I could see the Cassini division more clearly than you can see it here, but the night just wasn't the best seeing.

Saturn, early morning 8/8/99. Taken with my new Mewlon 210 scope and 2X Barlow for f/23..

This image of Jupiter has been enhanced with a 4 iteration Lucy-Richardson deconvolution. Even so, it was not one of the best nights and there isn't a whole lot of detail visible. Compare this to previous and following images of Jupiter, to see how much difference the seeing makes.

Jupiter, early morning 8/8/99. Also taken with Mewlon 210, using 2x Barlow before AO-7 for f/33.

Here are two images of Jupiter a few minutes apart, on a night of good but not great seeing. These show one of Jupiter's moons passing in front of the planet and casting it's shadow on Jupiter's clouds tops. I have not yet had a chance to look up which moon it was.

Jupiter, early morning 9/2/99. Taken with Mewlon 210, using 2x Barlow before AO-7 for f/33.

Here is a nice color image of Jupiter that I took on the morning of 8/28. Imaged in my Takahashi Mewlon 210, at f/33. I used manual gel filters (Galaxy Optics) in red, blue, and green. Detail isn't great due to modest seeing, but the color rendition is very close to what I saw in eyepiece.

Jupiter, early morning 8/28/99. Taken with Mewlon 210, using 2x Barlow before Galaxy Optics RGB gel filter holder for f/33.
Exposures are .22 red, .5 green, and 1 second blue.