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Solar System Journeys

Pic of the month October 2009: Secrets of the Moon

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Sun	Mercury
Venus	Earth
Moon	Mars
Jupiter	Saturn
Uranus	Neptune
Deep Space	tech spec

Hello, and welcome to Solar System Journeys. Here you will find a collection of my favourite astro-photos, which I have taken from late 2003 to present. Have a look around. These images are samples of what I see through my telescopes, but of course they cannot compare to the sight of these celestial wonders when seen directly by the human eye... no camera image can.

For information on the acquisition of these images, click on the Tech Spec link above.

Links

Update History

The Gear: NexStar GTL 80mm refractor (centre), Bushnell 60mm refractor (right), Powerseeker 114mm reflector (left), NexStar 8 SE 203mm reflector (not pictured)

The Calgary Clear Sky Chart: an astronomer's most handy tool for predicting all the factors and conditions that create favourable circumstances for observing.

Imaging Blog

27May2009: A super-close conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune.

1May2009: Some great Earth stills.

11Oct2008: A fantastic night to catch the always-elusive Uranus.

21Sep2008: An excellent night for moon shots! I have also experimented with shooting closeups of moonsets, and there is definite potential there.

21July2008: A great Jupiter and Uranus session. Got a great shot of Jupiter with the Great Red Spot bullseyeing the planet, and my best Uranus images to date.

29Jun2008: A rather excellent Jupiter session.

29May2008: Some nice shots of the waning Moon.

20Jan2008: An improvement on M42 - great skies, and if I can manage to align the scope perfectly, the results will improve!

8Dec2007: Some above-average Mars this evening in rather excellent sky conditions.

14Oct2007: Another trip 40 kms outsite of the City, for another splendid view of the countless stars of the Milky Way.

7Oct2007: My first attempt at deep space imaging with the NexStar - I am very happy with my first successful capture of M42, the Orion Nebula! I expect that this image, which I am so excited with, will be out-quaffed with successive imaging of this emission nebula.

16Sep2007: Took some Venus shots after the break of dawn, so that its' brilliancy would be somewhat reduced.

9Sep2007: Reasonable skies for a very nice sliver of a Moon, as well as a very brilliant Venus.

28Aug2007: The skies came through for the first total Lunar Eclipse in 3 years... all I can say is, WOW.

7Aug2007: Another night with 'decent' skies. This time my target was the waning Moon, of which I managed a few good images. The potential of the NexStar has barely been tapped...

22July2007: Tonight provided clear skies, as well as steady seeing... unfortunately, the last element of an astronomer's Holy Trinity, the Transparency, was relatively poor. Still, I obtained my clearest and sharpest view of the moon yet. Not a bad start for the NexStar.

8July2007: Well it has been a few days since the acquisition of my latest telescope, and tonight was the first night to take it out for a test drive. The sky was mostly cloudy, providing only a few patches of clear...ness, and of course the seeing and transparency were about as bad as they could get. I aimed at Jupiter. Man oh man, when the skies get nice, the image quality this scope will produce will destroy even the very best efforts from the past 4 years. This new scope is such a huge leap over my previous 3 models (each previous model was a modest step up from the model before) that it will be hard to look at the pics that are posted here presently...

19May2007: A great conjunction of the Moon and Venus - sky was not great but that didn't stop me from taking some pretty cool images!

14Apr2007: Average skies this evening, leading to some average Venus images.

9Apr2007: The weather put out fairly decent skies tonight, and of course I was outside faster than you can say 'planet'. I managed a multitude of great Saturn shots, and am extremely satisfied with the camera's performance. Now, once Jupiter gets better situated in the sky, I expect shots of the Great Red Spot, and with any luck, the Little Red Spot, too!

29March2007: Another night of decent skies. I managed a few interesting shots of the Moon and of Saturn (which was situated about 1 arc-minute below the moon around midnight) however, as has been the case lately, the Transparency and Seeing were not ideal. I look forward to a night of great skies to show off what the new camera can do...

12March2007: At last, a night of decent skies. Well, more like a few hours of decent skies. I managed some shots of Venus and Saturn. The image of Saturn is small but sweet - at last I am getting the clear distinction of the rings across the disc of the planet, as well as the shadow across the rings as the planet moves away from opposition.

27Feb2007: Unbelievably, it has now been close to two months since the last time Calgary has seen truly great skies, hence the lack of new images. A shame really, as the Saturn Opposition took place in early February, Venus has been putting on quite a show at sunset, and Jupiter now rises before the Sun... In celebration of the upcoming Total Lunar Eclipse this March (which will not be visible from my corner of the Earth), I am posting an image from the Eclipse of October 2004.

18Feb2007: At last, a night of clear enough skies to take the new camrea out for some test shots! Target: Saturn. The sky conditions were terrible, but it was clear enough to determine the capabilities of the new camera. The camera will take me closer to the planets than ever before. Tonight's test shots revealed a large Saturn, with (finally) a clear colour separation between the planet and its rings. Once Nature decides to give me truly great skies, I should be able to increase the quality of the images on the site by a considerable level!

5Feb2007: A new camera, for superior imaging! The three main features (improvements over the previous model) are an optical zoom of x4 (combined digital / optical zoom now at x16!), a higher max. resolution, and half the power consumption! The sky has not been friendly lately, however, with the Saturn Opposition of 2007 now only 5 days away, it will be a treat to try out the new camera!

31Jan2007: Another month with very intermittend observing conditions, and most of the time that the sky was clear, I was too busy to image anything. However, there were moments when I got a few good Saturn shots. Saturn is at opposition on the 10th of February so my focus on this planet will increase over the next few weeks.

11Jan2007: A fairly significant addition - a new category! I have imaged the Great Orion Nebula well enough to post on the site. Also I added some technical informaiton on how I acquire these images of the Solar System.

1Jan2007: Welcome to the New Year! An older image for Pic of the Month I'm afraid, mainly due to unfavourable imaging conditions this past December.

3Dec2006: The sky was generally unfriendly this past month, not to mention that there was a distinct lack of readily observable planetary targets. On an interesting note, the latest image of Saturn is of the same apparent size as the image taken 1 year ago, and the tilt in the rings is becoming less and less visible.

8Nov2006: Well the sky was very overcast today, the day of the Mercury Transit of 2006 (the last one for many years) but I did catch an 8 minute window of relative clear sky (where the Sun was) and so managed 25 shots of Mercury as it transited across the sun. Unfortunately, I missed 1st contact as the sun was covered by cloud, but did manage some shots just as the planet began to cross. Very rare, and thrilling observation. The next Transit will be that of Venus, in June 2012, and it will be the last Transit of Venus I will be able to see in my lifetime (the next one will be over 100 years later). Here's to clear skies in June 2012!

6Nov2006: 100 hits! In two years! Well, this site was not intended to be mass-public, rather, a place where I can post my images to share with family and friends. Preparations have begun for the imaging of the 2006 Mercury Transit, which is visible in its' entirety from my location, on 8November2006.

7Oct2006: Added one older Earth image (not often that I can fly high enough to get above the clouds!). Looking forward to the upcoming Mercury transit of November 8, 2006, which will be visible in its' entirety from my vantage point. Here's to clear skies!

25Sep2006: Not much new I'm afraid, mainly due to a combination of cloudy skies as well as none of the planets being particularily well situated for imaging this month. Saturn will return to the early morning skies in October, so I hope to be able to acquire new images of the ringed planet. It will be interesting to see if my equipment can still pick up the separation between Saturn's rings, as the planet tilts more towards a ring-on view from Earth.

25Aug2006: Well, the IAU has created an official definition of the term PLANET, and by that definition, Pluto no longer qualifies. Therefore, there are 8 planets in the Solar System. As Pluto was the only planet up until this point that I had not imaged, and seeing as it is no longer a planet by definition, I am removing Pluto from this website. I remain greatly interested in aquiring images of Pluto, but don't look for them here...

8Aug2006: Added 1 Uranus and 1 Neptune image, both of which were taken under almost perfect sky conditions. Everything worked out this night - perfect sky, and perfect alignment of the telescope. I have also imaged one of Uranus' largest moons, Miranda, however not clearly enough to post on this site. Next up - Pluto!

3Jul2006: Another 3 new Moon images, and I do believe my finest effort yet. Now, only superior equipment or better sky conditions will lead to more favourable results.

2Jul2006: Added two sharp images of the Sun, complete with a sunspot close to the centre of the image. Also added a fairly nice new Jupiter image. Jupiter is currently receeding from our point of view, so it is getting smaller and smaller. Also added two new lunar images, and I would have to say that they are a close 2nd to my best achievement.

31May2006: My first successful image of Venus in almost 2 years, taken at dawn with the planet nearing full phase. This image is a lot less bright than previous efforts. This was done on purpose, to remove the incredible glare this planet always gives off.

23April2006: I have finally imaged (although faintly) the elusive (for my gear) Great Red Spot storm system of the planet Jupiter! This did not make Pic of the month solely due to the fact the GRS is so faint in the image. Also, I captured my best shot of the entire visible Jupiter System (planet + Galilean Satellites), with the largest Moon, Ganymede, about to transit the planet! Great stuff on a rare night of rather good air conditions. I have also posted a new image of Earth from low orbit, obtained en route to Orlando, as seen from a 767.

13March2006: Perhaps the least common shot in astrophotography: our own planet Earth, as seen from very low orbit! There is nothing more humbling than seeing our own corner of the Solar System, a blue water world hanging in the cold, dark vastness of space. Seeing the white clouds hang onto the globe, the small (as seen here) specks of green land, the blue hue pushing back the blackness of space...

5March2006: A great Moon shot!

11February2006: First update of the new year, and a brilliant image of Saturn no less! I do not think I will achieve much better for this planet, this year.

27December2005: Wow, I have now been imaging for three years. I can still remember the first time I imaged Saturn - it was a dark, small, and grainy image. 2003 and 2004 was a year I acquired many experimental images - trying to figure out where the planets were situated and imaging them under any conditions. 2005 was a year where large images have been my focus. While the results have been superior to those of 2003 and 2004, the detail that I wanted to show in the large images was rarely there - my equipment is simply not geared to show detail under the highest magnifications. My focus for 2006 images will be clarity and detail - so expect smaller images, but also expect to be able to see finer detail than ever before. On to 2006!

7December2005: One year online! A new Saturn image - possibly my best one yet. Certainly not the closest I have gotten to Saturn, but it is one of my clearest images. Better Saturn pics are coming!

4November2005: Excellent shots of Mars at opposition and closest approach, as well as perhaps my finest lunar image ever.

24October2005: Mars is only a week away from its' closest approach for the next 13 years, and it is looking splendid indeed. The largest image gives a hint of the south polar ice cap with the red colour of the planet becoming somewhat lighter in the image.

8October2005: Another splendid Mars shot, this time depicting a bark band encircling the northern hemisphere of the planet (the image is reversed).

28September2005: A clear night and a wonderful view of Mars! This was the first time I have been able to actually see surface details on the Red Planet - no easy feat, as the whole planet appears about half as small as the crater Tycho on the Moon! Anyways, I was able to see a clear separation between the high plains and the lowlands around the equator. As opposition approaches, I expect to be able to see at least one of the polar ice caps. I tried imaging the detail I saw with mediocre results - I had to use a combimation of high magnification, coupled with optical and digital zoom on the camera, which led to an all-right result. Using digital zoom is obviously not the ideal method, but it was the only way for the camera to capture the colour variation. Now, due to orbital mechanics, Mars will not get as close to the Earth as it will be this November until the year 2018...

28August2005: Countdown complete. Netpune imaged. Also, obtained shots of the northern Lunar hemisphere for three nights running, showing the progression of the terminator as the Moon winds down its' current cycle.

22August2005: Holy crap, that's 5 updates so far this month!! And if the Countdown to Neptune concludes in August, that will be even more. Anyways, since the site has grown over 10 MB again, I took all the Moon images offline and set them up on different webspace, and linked them. I also split the images up into images of the entire lunar disk, and anything closer, as there were too many Moon pics. Finally, I removed a few images that I felt no longer represented the best I could achieve. Now... if I could just find that Neptune...

21August2005 PM: Obtained my first solar images! It was very thrilling to stare at the 'surface' of the Sun and watch the sunspots!

21August2005 AM: Night 3 of getting used to the new telescope. Managed one Uranus image (1st one in almost a year!) and was going to get some great Mars images and some Neptune pics... but the camera's batteries gave out. Curses. The Countdown to Neptune continues...

16August2005: Countdown till Neptune! Soon I will acquire more Uranus images (I have only ever managed to find this elusive world once, back in 2004) and my first Nepture images! These will be taken thru my new Celestron NexStar GTL. I now have 4 telescopes. The new NexStar will produce images of approximately equal resolution as the PowerSeeker Reflector I have, but will have increased sharpness. Say it! Sharpness! YES!! I also expect to really start growing my Deep Sky Images section. I want pictures of star clusters, nebulae, and even galaxies! It is a good time to be a nerd... er, astronomer.

15August2005: Well, I have taken my first trip out of town for the express purpose of stargazing. All I can say is, wow! I travelled approx. 60 KM out of city limits and set up on an obscure gravel road (Township Road 250). Once the car lights were off, that was it. Pitch darkness. The sky was stupendous. Millions of stars, with the band of the Milky Way galaxy spanning the heavens like a glittering scarf. Unreal. Looking in the direction of the city, all one could see was a great dome of light...

2August2005: Interesting things happening in Astronomy, with the discovery of a 'planet' larger than Pluto at 70 AU from the Sun. Will they call it a planet to increase the official number of planets to 10? Or will they classify it, and Pluto, as Kupier Belt Objects and reduce the number of planets to 8?? Time will tell. In the meantime, I will focus the next three weeks on obtaining additional Uranus images, as well as my first Neptune images. This will require a trip out of town, to escape Calgary's light pollution.

4July2005: Mars is closer and closer, and my images of said planet are improving. On a side note, it may soon be time to do something about the Moon page, as it is getting very large...

27June2005: I am posting but one new Moon image today. With all the rain Calgary has had this month, there have been virtually no good nights for imaging. To keep busy, I have colour-corrected (or should I say 'enhanced') many of the existing Moon images. That's the thing with astrophotography - not a single image on this site has not been processed to one degree to another. As soon as an image is processed, even slightly, you could argue that it moves from being a 'picture' (a raw representation of the subject at the time it was taken) to an artistic image (processed to bring out details and so on, but completely subject to my aesthetic tastes). So, are they pictures or digital art? I call them images, and you are free to form your opinion on the matter. Now, back to the site. You may notice the site is now more friendly to 1024 by 768 resolution, and the background image does not scroll with the text, thanks to advice from a website pro. Lastly, I had one of my images published on Space.com's Amazing Images! Very exciting for a space nerd like me.

1June2005: The wonders of Adobe Photoshop! Truly a great astro-image processing platform. The best part is that it can selectively turn off bad colour channels if one turned out worse than another. Cameras (at least the two I have) take pictures in three colour channels: red, green, and blue. They are then combined to give an accurate colour representation of the subject. Now, under perfect sky conditions, all three channels produce excellent results, and the combined image is equally impressive. However, there are as many perfect sky nights in Calgary as there are Lunar Eclipses in a year,  so images often suffer from graininess and distortion. If you take the three channels and separate them, you will see two or perhaps one channel that is terrible and the other(s) quite good, so you can eliminate the 'bad' channels and keep the good ones. Now, this throws the colour right off, but it preserves the sharpness and quality of the image, and the colour can be corrected to a great degree later on in the program. All this means that I can produce higher quality images when the sky is not perfect. Very exciting stuff. Anyways, the new images this update include my best effort at a Mars image, where the disk of the planet is clearly resolved, and some colour variation is visible on the planet, as well as a nice portrait of the Jupiter System and one of the poles of the moon. Can't wait 'till November, when Mars will come into opposition and grow in apparent size to more than twice what I have achieved today!

15May2005: The crap sky conditions continue. I managed some very clear shots of the waxing moon, though, as well as my first, definitive image of the mysterious Saturnian moon, Titan. So long as the sky conditions improve, so will the quality of the images... the best of 2005 is yet to come!

26Mar2005: Calgary has not had great sky conditions yet this year. Tonight the sky was clear, and the seeing was above average, but the transparency was terrible! Nontheless I decided to snap up some images of Jupiter, and am quite pleased with the results. With Jupiter less than 2 weeks from opposition, this may be the closest the planet will come with not terrible sky conditions. Also, I have read my new camera's manual cover to cover (a big book!) and have discovered that it can take quite long exposures with minimal digital noise. This is very exciting as it will allow me to achieve far better results with deep sky objects. I plan to image the Orion Nebula again and I salvitate at the prospect of being able to show much more of the Nebula. Coincidentally, I have now overcome the exposure compensation problem I had encountered with this new camera and I can again capture targets with all detail preserved.

10Mar2005: MERCURY! The toughest naked-eye planet to image. In 2004 I was only able to get 5 images of this elusive world, on two separate occasions. Tonight I went out and managed to snap 14 images, at different magnifications. The seeing was very poor, meaning the air was not still and the images suffered from distortion by air turbulence, but with the very rare appearance of this planet, I couldn't resist. Mercury is so hard to see because it orbits so close to the sun, meaning from our vantage point on Earth, it only appears immediately after sunset 3 times a year, and immediately before sunrise 3 other times. Very rare indeed. Also I managed to take a few images of the Great Orion Nebula that captured some of the gas around the stars in the nebula. Previously I have not been able to pick up anything but the stars.

6Mar2005: I am adding this text box for my mad musings. I got a new camera in early February, which can take images with up to 30% higher resolution than the previous model. Since then, though, the sky has either been too cloudy or else the seeing or transparency was unfavourable for imaging. I did take the camera out the morning of March 2, for some test shots of the Moon and of the Jovian System, and I must say I am excited and looking forward to a night with a great sky. I was able to get closer to the Moon's surface than ever before, as well as capture an interesting shot of Jupiter with all four Galilean Satellites. The one downside I have discovered so far is that the camera has trouble compensating for the extreme differences in brightness between my subjects (planets) and the background (black). I will have to buy a set of filters. I will be doing this soon, as the 2005 Opposition of Jupiter is approaching and I know I can get excellent shots there. In the mean time, I will be posting 2 of the test shots as a teaser for what's to come. If the quality of the 2004 images was a leap over the 2003 images, then the 2005 ones will again be a huge leap over 2004.