Peter the Fraudfinder's photostream

Mars kindly showing almost the same face nearly six weeks apart, images are to scale showing both that Mars is now much nearer and also that the North polar ice cap is rapidly shrinking too.

Peter

Equipment: Mono DMK21AU, 2.5x Barlow, RGB colour filters and 12" f10 Meade LX200 SCT

You can just about make out Io at the line intersection in this RRGB image of Jupiter I took just as it was getting dark at around 6pm this evening.

Equipment used: Mono DMK21AU, colour filters, 2.5x Powermate and 12" f10 LX200 SCT.

Peter

This is a comparison of two Mars images taken about an hour apart using my mono DMK21 and 12" f10 SCT, where I took the left hand one using a 1.25 and Televue 2.5x Powermate and the right hand one with a 2x 2" 'Big Barlow' from Televue with a 2" diagonal behind it so that it did the image at an effective 3x. I then scaled up the much smaller left hand image to the same size as the right hand image. I seriously expected the left hand image to be more contrasted but to capture more small detail in the right hand image. In actual practice, I think the smaller original image has outperformed the larger image in both contrast and detail, but there is little between them.

The slight halo round the images isn't poor stacking, individual images were all showing the same artefact, which I put down to atmospherics on Earth!

Peter

A tricky object at the best of times, a bright and yet tiny planetary nebula, just about 1 arcminute across.

Taken with my Atik383L, no reducer, LRGB through my 12" f10 SCT, autoguided through the scope with a Lodestar on an off-axis guider. Images L= 30x1m, R, G and B all 10x30 seconds.

Peter

Managed to get some reasonable detail, the more interesting side of Mars and also fairly good seeing as well. The North polar cap is clearly shrinking as well.

Peter