First Saturn Attempt + Waxing Crescent Moon April 28, 2012

Here's my first attempt at Saturn with my new Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000. Average seeing, good transparency. Saturn was about 30 degrees above the horizon so I definitely could improve. About 15 sec. captured in SharpCap and stacked in Registax 5.1. Levels/Curves adjusted in Photoshop.

Here's the waxing crescent moon from last night. Quick, single shot at Prime Focus with Sony A300. One of my better lunar images.

First Lunar Video

Video taken with my 6 inch Dob and Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000. First attempt.

First Solar Image!

Here's my first Solar image! Taken at Prime Focus with Baader Solar Film. Single frame, cropped in Photoshop CS5. I've managed to capture some sun spots!

Crescent Venus Picture

Here's a picture I got of Venus tonight. It is a 35% Crescent, and growing in size as it approaches Earth. This is a single afocal frame through my 6 inch Dob. 21mm Baader Hyperion is the eyepiece.

Observing Reports and lots of new Messier!

Here are two reports from the last couple days. Over the past 3 weeks I have seen over 20 Messier! (I did not take these pictures!)

04/07/12

The newly Waning Gibbous gave me some more time when the sun set to search for some Leo galaxies. It was a very nice night, no clouds, transparency at about 4.8 (limiting naked eye magnitude tonight), average seeing. and  At about 8:25pm I went out and tried. M105 was a first, and was surprisingly easy to find and see. NGC 3371 was a dimmer galaxy right next to it. I put these two galaxies in the corner of the 21mm Baader Hyperion (which gave my 6 inch scope  a magnification of about 57x). I could just fit M96 in the same field, it was a spectacular sight! Then I put M96 in the corner and went up a little bit to M95. After a couple times, I finally saw M95, slightly dimmer than the other two. All these galaxies looked like small circular smudges. Then I went to M53 globular cluster. It was a nice round glob at low power. I tried medium power, but I’m definitely used to the wider FOV on the Hyperion. The 10mm stock eyepiece is awful, I’m going to save up for an 8mm Baader Hyperion. I bought a Baader Solar Film yesterday to observe the transit of Venus and the May 20 Solar Eclipse! After M53, I tried for M3, which should be easy to see. I couldn’t find it and became frustrated and gave up. I came in for a little break and to wait for Saturn to rise over the trees. Sky Safari Plus (a $14 iOS app) has been a real help and I use it to find all the DSO’s. Saturn looked great as usual. This four-Messier night brings my Messier count to 29/110!

M96

04/06/12

Tonight I tested out my new Baader Hyperion 21mm Modular eyepiece. It was good, but I haven’t reached it’s full potential because of the conditions. I really like it’s larger FOV, though not quite 68*. It started to get cloudy and the moon was rising when I was looking for M95 and SN2012aw in the galaxy. The sky glow was horrible. I couldn’t find it. I took about 40 2.5 sec. exposures and 10 darks. After trying to stack in DSS, I couldn’t and deleted the pictures. Then I showed my neighbors the full moon, which looked great in the new 21mm. On to Saturn, I got extremely good views despite poor conditions and the moon shining right next to it. I was able to see Titan again, and 10th magnitudes Rhea and Tethys for the first time. The 21mm is definitely a good low power planetary eyepiece, which makes me eager to spend $130 more on the 8mm. I didn’t get to check out too many DSO’s tonight. M42 looked awful because of the sky glare. M35 was good but that’s pretty much it for DSO’s. The main highlight of the night was Saturn.

Saturn