Saturn, June 17th

Here is Saturn from Thursday night. I'm experimenting with a different technique, using an infrared image in a luminance layer in Photoshop to improve sharpness and lower noise.

Saturn from Tuesday

We had a nice clear night on Tuesday and I grabbed this pic of Saturn.

2009 Jupiter

From the Vault; here's a Jupiter image I took last year and didn't end up processing it until this week. I'll probably start imaging Jupiter again this Fall. It'll be higher in the sky this year and the pics should turn out less fuzzy.

Saturn on April 27

I increased the magnification on Saturn this time. The equipment is all running well! No skunks sighted.

April Saturn

Here's Saturn from last night. Click for a slightly bigger version. I saw my first skunk of the year while I had the scope out!

Mars Mars Mars

I took this image on Tuesday night this week. (Click for a bigger version.) Sky conditions were very good. Mars is pretty small currently, but I managed to capture lots of detail on the small disk. The dark dot poking through the light clouds on the left is Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest volcano.

Clear Weather

The skies were clear in town on Saturday night so I got in some observing on the Orion Nebula despite the 12 deg temps. I used my new narrowband filter and it made the nebulosity much more noticeable, can't wait to try it on more objects. The seeing was pretty steady and I saw the 'F' star in the Trapezium for the first time.

Here's an image of the Trapezium I took last Winter.