March 21st Mars

Here is Mars from March 21st.  Conditions were good, but I was having some trouble with the big scope and didn't get as good of an image as might have been possible that night.  I may reprocess the videos later to see if I can tease out more details.

Mars in March

Here is Mars from March 9th, 2012.  Lots and lots of clouds on Mars this day.  Syrtis Major is visible on the left and there's a bright cloud hovering over the volcano Elysium Mons on the right.  A little detail is visible in the north polar cap as well.

Taken with a Celestron 9.25" SCT, 3x barlow, Skynyx video camera with RGB filters.

Saw a rabbit in the yard - no skunks though.

Old Summer Moon

Here's a test shot of the Moon from July 5th of 2011.

Jupiter, Dec 11 2011

Here's Jupiter and Europa from Sunday night through the 9.25" scope. The Southern Equatorial Belt is back this year!

Supernova SN 2011dh

Last night I took a very brief exposure of the Whirlpool Galaxy supernova that was discovered by amateurs last week. I may be able to observe it visually if it keeps brightening at it's current rate.

Here's an image of the same galaxy that I took in May 2009:

Wednesday's Saturn

We had a clear night last week! It wasn't even that cold. I reassembled the big scope and snapped a pic of Saturn.

The Trapezium

Here are two pics of the Trapezium star cluster. It's embedded in the center of the Great Orion Nebula. These images are from a week ago, we had a nice clear night here. I had imaged the Trapezium previously with my old camera; I don't think I captured any more detail this time but the color balance is much better IMO. The first picture is in true color.



The second is a false color image that includes near-infrared light - this allows you to see more stars that are otherwise obscured by all the dust in the nebula.