Hercules and Atlas

Stepping up to the images captured using the 2x Barlow we have Hercules and Atlas, two craters towards the northeast limb that have featured previously here. The higher magnification images take much longer to process but, in this case, the end result is pleasing:


Hercules is the crater to the left (69km in diameter), Atlas to the right (87km in diameter). Inside Hercules is the satellite crater Hercules G. Moving northeast from Atlas we encounter Atlas E, Atlas F and Keldysh.

Janssen

Back to the Moon again for this post, in particular the rugged highlands towards the southeastern limb. The crater Janssen, named after the French astronomer who co-discovered helium, is the largest in this picture but not the most prominent. It is an ancient crater and contains many other smaller craters within its walls, such as the more distinctive Fabricus.


A relatively crisp image and with a lot of features to be labelled:

Jupiter's Galilean Moons

Four of Jupiter's inner-most satellites - the Galilean moons - are very easy to spot and their relatively short orbital periods make them entertaining to watch as they change position, eclipse each other and disappear and reappear from behind Jupiter itself. However they don't show up on the webcam videos unless they are over-exposed in which case Jupiter becomes a big blur. Hence a bit of artistic licence...


Here we have am over-exposed image of the moons overlaid on a processed image of Jupiter! From left to right we have Ganymede (the largest moon in the Solar System and even bigger than Mercury), Callisto (third largest in Solar System after Saturn's moon Titan) and Europa (sixth largest in the Solar System). Io (fourth largest in Solar System) is behind Jupiter so not visible. In case you were wondering, our moon is the fifth largest moon in the Solar System so sits between Io and Europa in size.

Revisiting Mare Crisium

Jupiter wasn't the only target on my list a couple of nights ago and, with the Moon in a similar phase to my last webcam session, I revisited a few recent destinations.

First of all we have Mare Crisium and Proclus which were most recently featured here so I won't include any more details.


I'm quite pleased with this one since it's much sharper than my previous attempt. I also took some higher magnification videos of Proclus which I'll upload once I've found time to process them.

Jupiter

Considering how much time I spend looking at it I was a little surprised when I realised that I have yet to post a picture of Jupiter. Last night was relatively still and clear and with Jupiter fairly favourably positioned it sat at the top of my list of targets. Usually I stay at the eyepiece when observing Jupiter, there's just so much to look at - distinguishing the different belts and zones, watching the progress of the moons - but this time I used the webcam.

I haven't practised much on Jupiter with the webcam so I'm still trying out different filters and settings. It's a similar process to that which I went through when observing Mars and so far I haven't cracked it when using the 2x Barlow. Here's the best of the bunch from last night:


The main equatorial belts are clear and zooming in a little makes it possible to pick out the Great Red Spot on the South Equatorial Belt (towards the right edge):


All in all, not a bad attempt but I expect something much better once I've had a bit more practice.

Sunspot 1302

Solar activity is up compared to last year but there still isn't a huge amount going on. This sudden sunny spell tempted me into the garden today to see what was on offer. Here's the Sun as of 10 o'clock this morning:


Much more interesting than the last time I took some sunspot pictures! So much so that I got out the webcam and took some videos of the main sunspot towards the centre (sunspot 1302). The detail has come out quite well:


The conditions were fairly still so I managed to get sharper focus than usual. It makes a change from the Moon!

Endymion

The final image from the latest set moves us back up to the north-east limb of the Moon, close to Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold"). The most prominent features in this region are the craters Endymion, on the edge of the shadow, and Atlas and Hercules to the south:


I really like the depth of this picture and the feeling of something going on beyond the shadow. Here is the labelled version:


Looking back at my posts from the last year I noticed that I haven't included anything other than Moon pictures! Admittedly the Moon is my favourite target but I think it's about time I branched out for a post or two.

Petavius

A further short hop south brings us to Petavius, another prominent crater. Petavius has a particularly wide terraced rim in relation to the width of the crater as a whole. The crater floor has been mostly filled by lava-flow but the multiple central peaks are clearly visible and rise up to 1.7km above the new crater floor. There is also a deep fracture that runs south-west from the central peak, which may be the whitish line visible in the picture:


You may recognise the crater at the top of the image as Vendelinus, one of the subjects of the previous post. Before the clouds got the better of me I managed to grab a 30 second video of Petavius at higher magnification. Not surprisingly the resultant image isn't great but here it is anyway:


For completeness here is a labelled version of the low magnification image:

Langrenus and Vendelinus

Moving to the south of Mare Crisium skirts along the eastern edge of Mare Fecunditatis ("Sea of Fertility") and brings the craters Langrenus and Vendelinus into view:


Langrenus is an easily identified crater even at full Moon, particularly due to its relatively high albedo, whereas Vendelinus is much more difficult to spot unless it is near the terminator. As one would anticipate from looking at the photo, the more irregular shaped and battered Vendelinus is the older crater.

Here's a copy of the same image with the main features labelled:

Mare Crisium

Now that the short summer nights have passed I've dusted off the kit and am looking forward to the autumn and winter skies. This week has seen plenty of gaps in the cloud but also quite a lot of haze and a full Moon, so to ease myself back into taking pictures I've started with some Moon shots (not that I need an excuse for taking Moon pictures anyway).

By chance the last couple of years have presented me with more waxing Moons than waning Moons, so despite the hazy sky it was pleasing to have a waning gibbous Moon to offer something a bit different. I'm going to start with a picture of Mare Crisium which follows on nicely from my last post from the spring regarding Proclus. Mare Crisium (the "Sea of Crises") is located towards the north-east of the Moon and is easily picked-out above and to the right of Mare Tranquillitatis. Proclus lies between these two "seas" and my earlier post shows Proclus at full moon (ideally the picture should be rotated about 30 degrees anti-clockwise). This time we see Proclus and Mare Crisium at the terminator (and a more accurate orientation!):


The high albedo of Proclus is still apparent but its ray system is not as obvious as in the full Moon picture and mainly visible to the west. Despite the poor seeing conditions and minimal processing, I think the picture has come out quite well.

Here is a modified version with some of the key features labelled:

Proclus

After writing about Tycho's prominent ejecta or ray system, I've finally pulled out a picture of Proclus that I took in March last year. Proclus is a crater that lies towards the east of the Moon near to Mare Crisium, and I took this picture on a near full Moon.


As you can see Proclus has a high albedo which is second only to my favourite Aristarchus in brightness. The ray system is also very bright and extends for over 600km in some directions. You will notice that there are few rays extending from the left of the crater suggesting that it was formed by an oblique impact at a low angle from the west. Another unusual feature that is just about evident in this picture is that the rim of Proclus is distinctly pentagonal in shape.

Revisiting Proclus is high on my to-do list, especially now my image processing has improved. I just need a clear night and the right phase of the Moon.

Tycho and Maginus

The last post looked at Pitatus and Gauricus and this next picture is of the area a short distance to the south (Gauricus is visible in the top-left). I mention the crater Tycho in quite a few posts but it doesn't appear in many of the pictures. Although not the greatest viewing angle, here we can see Tycho as the deep, round crater near the centre-left. Maginus is the larger and shallower crater in the bottom-right. The picture has the same focussing issues as that in the previous post.


Tycho is named after the 16th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, most famous for his detailed astronomical observations and his metal false nose. A relatively young crater at around 110 million years old, Tycho is very prominent and can easily be picked out with the naked eye by following the bright lines of ejecta thrown out during its creation. Similarly to other young craters, it is speculated that Tycho was created by an asteroid from the same family that caused the Chicxulub crater on Earth which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The crater is nearly 5km deep but the main central peak is clearly visible as a bright spot in the shadow.

Maginus is typical of many of the older craters featured in earlier posts - it has a heavily eroded rim with numerous smaller and more recent impacts, and is a shallower crater that has been partially flooded by lava.

Pitatus and Gauricus

Here's another shot from the set I compiled last month. This time I've moved further south to just below Mare Nubium and north-west of Tycho. I usually favour the northern hemisphere when taking pictures, mainly because there are more maria which makes many features more prominent and easier to capture in a picture. There are a lot more craters in the south making it harder to decide on a specific target and harder to generate a picture which isn't obviously blurred around the edges.


The picture is roughly orientated correctly with Mare Nubium at the top, Pitatus the larger crater near the centre and Gauricus just below it and to the right. As suggested by nearly being a part of Mare Nubium, Pitatus is an old crater that flooded with lava at a similar time. Craters such as this have been filled via floor-fracture, meaning that they were flooded from within by lava that rose up through cracks in the crater floor. The surrounding lava flow that filled Mare Nubium has encroached upon the crater rim but not poured over it into the crater.

Gauricus has few notable features and has been heavily worn and eroded by subsequent smaller impacts. To the left of Gauricus, the shape of the crater Wurzelbauer can be seen in the shadow. Tycho is the prominent crater on the bottom edge.

As I mentioned above, the craters on the edge of the field of view make any blurring more obvious. I also think the focussing is generally a bit off since only the area around Pitatus appears anywhere near sharp.

Processing Plato

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I've been intending to improve my image processing for a while now. I do my processing using Registax and have just had a first foray into the myriad of options and settings. I haven't 'drizzled' yet but I've tried out a few tricks and tips I've read about elsewhere.

I thought it would be interesting to re-process one of my Plato videos and look at the results of each processing step.

Step 0: before I start I already have lots of images - each raw frame from the video. These images vary in quality depending on the viewing conditions at that moment but here is a typical frame from the video I'm about to process:


Step 1: the bulk of the Registax processing involves aligning the individual frames and selecting the best ones to stack together to create a new picture. I've used 400 frames out of the 3200 available. This creates an image that is less noisy (i.e. smoother) but also quite blurry:


Step 2: the step that makes all the difference is tweaking the image properties to bring out the detail. This is something of a black art and can range from simple changes to the contrast/brightness to sharpening individual image layers or manipulation in PhotoShop. Increasing the brightness and contrast gives us this:


Then sharpening some of the image layers:


And finally changing the saturation and lightness:


So this is the final image using a new processing technique! Here's the image using the old technique:


I think there's a clear improvement (especially if you click on each image to enlarge them) with the same detail but much less noise.

Cassini

Staying in the vacinity of Mare Imbrium I picked a new target in the crater Cassini. There are a couple of famous astronomers called Cassini but the most noted is Giovanni Domenico Cassini. G.D. Cassini was a 17th century Italian astronomer who was the first to observe many of the moons of Saturn, the main (Cassini) division in Saturn's rings and, along with Robert Hooke, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

I only recorded one video of Cassini using the 2x Barlow and here is the end result:


The Cassini crater is the larger, flat crater surrounding the 2 smaller craters (which are Cassini A and Cassini B). It is belived that Cassini flooded with lava at around the same time as Mare Imbrium, about 4 billion years ago. The A and B craters are certainly younger impacts.

Plato

The next stop was Plato, just a short hop north across Mare Imbrium. My last images of Plato were taken in November and I was hoping for something better this time.

Here are the picks:


Similarly to Eratosthenes in my last post, this image is much crisper than my previous efforts. The shadows clearly show the jagged shape of the crater rim. Below Plato and slightly to the right, the light falling on Mons Pico makes it look much taller than its 2.4km height.


I think this is my best image using the 2x Barlow. Sections of the video were so clear that I'm hoping to get a sharper picture by processing it differently. I'm just not sure how to do it at the moment.

Eratosthenes

There have been a few clear nights over the last couple of weeks which is a big improvement on a pretty grim winter. The best night coincided with the last new moon which was great for being back at the eyepiece but not so great for creating material for this blog. Last night was clearer than usual - barely a hint of cloud and very still. I was optimistic.

Since it was one month since my last lunar observations (this is becoming something of a theme...) I was, yet again, presented with the usual targets of the first-quarter moon. I started with the old favourite of Eratosthenes last visited here.

I had a bit more time since I wasn't cloud dodging and produced a number of images both with and without the 2x Barlow. The best ones are these:


This is much crisper than the image in my previous Eratosthenes post. Montes Appenninus always look impressive and the distance from the termintor is perfect for enhancing the detail without everything being swamped in shadow. The exterior shadow from Timocharis shows up nicely as well (top left).


This image with the 2x Barlow really shows the detail inside the crater. I'm still working on adjusting the focus during video capture when using the higher magnification. This could help to sharpen the images a little although there is always a natural limit to how sharp the image can be. A green filter might help as well but I haven't tried that yet.

Copernicus

The bad weather has continued for the last few weeks but I've managed to grab a couple of breaks in the cloud. This included using my Revelation 20x100 binoculars on the Orion Nebula - the nebula filters really brought out the detail even under suburban skies. The Pleiades also looks much better through the wider field of view of the binoculars than through the telescope. I've also managed to set-up a few times just to have thick cloud appear within minutes. Such is the British weather. Looking at my observing logs, my 2 decent sessions from the last 2 months compares with the 19 I racked up in the same period last year.

Anyway, I ventured out with the laptop and webcam last night to what looked like promising skies. The weather forecast predicted clear skies until beyond midnight but I thought it best to crack on with taking videos. I chose the Moon ahead of targetting Orion with the diffraction grating, while hoping that I'll get another chance to have a crack at Orion before the spring.

Since this was almost exactly 2 months since my last lunar observation I was presented with the same collection of prime targets as my previous set of posts. With a thin veil of cloud drawing in I decided to play it safe and target Copernicus with a 2x Barlow. Considering the haze when I finished recording I am quite pleased with the result:


The hazy cloud has washed it out and made it a bit blurry but I feel like I'm getting better at recording with the 2x Barlow. How long it will take me to get to grips with the 5x Barlow is another matter.