Saturn!!!!

Wow, talk about a great night out, not only was i able to image the Moon, but Jupiter AND Saturn!! Wow, i was so excited, for the longest time I have been trying to capture these two Planets and to get them both in the same night, that was special. Saturn is known to be the 'Ringed Planet', and was the first thing I ever saw out of this telescope. The images were very hard to aquire, the planet was very small in the 25mm.




















Date: March 14th, 2005
Time: 10:15PM EST
Location: Driveway of 111 Reed Drive
Seeing: Good
Site Conditions: Cold
Eyepiece Used: Stock 25mm
Instrument: NexStar 114GT with Kodak 4330DX Digital Camera and mount.

Jupiter!!!!

Tonight was a great night, not only was the seeing good, I finally got to image Jupiter!!! Now it may not look as pretty as some otheri mages of Jupiter, but it was done with my Digital Camera, held to the EP with my camera mount!!! I cannot see any detail on the Gas Giant, its basically a glowing ball. However suprisingly in some of the images I was able to capture 3 of the 4 Galilean Moons, the 4th was infront of the Planet and out of view, according to the graph below:

Io
Europa
Ganymede
Callisto (infront of Jupiter)

Jupiter has over 60 moons but only 4 (listed above) are able to be seen from small telescopes.

Here are the images I was able to capture of Jupiter:

This is an unedited image of Jupiter.

Here is an edited image, with the contrast and brightness boosted to show 3 of the Galilean Moons Io, Europa,Ganymede, and Callisto (not shown)


Date: March 14th, 2005
Time: 10:00PM EST
Location: Driveway of 111 Reed Drive
Seeing: Good
Site Conditions: Cold
Eyepiece Used: Stock 25mm
Instrument: NexStar 114GT with Kodak 4330DX Digital Camera and mount.

3 Day Old Moon

Tonight I was lucky for the second day in a row of good seeing conditions, the seeing was very good and I was able to pull out my Digital Camera mount to image the 3 day old moon tonight.

I Used my Kodak 4330DX digital camera and camera mount, with my new Moon and Sky Glow Filter Jennifer gave me for my birthday. Imaging with the filter was actually alot better quality than without. The images with the filter in place have more contrast and are less washed out.

I didnt get too much observing done, as I was too busy taking images, it was pretty cold out (-12c) and I mainly wanted to take some quick images.

The moon was showing some very interesting craters along the terminator tonight.

The Mickey Mouse-eared Craters along the southern terminator are new to me, I bont ever remember seeing them. The shape actually consists of about 5 large craters. They are: Pitiscus as the Left ear, Vlacq as the Right Ear, and Hommel as the Head (the other craters inside Hommel are labeled a, b, c, etc.)

Date: March 14th, 2005
Time: 10:00PM EST
Location: Driveway of 111 Reed.
Seeing: Good.
Site Conditions: Cold, Clear.
Eyepiece Used: Stock 25mm, with Moon and Sky Glow filter.
Instrument: NexStar 114GT with Kodak 4330DX Digital Camera with Camera mount.

2 Day old Moon

Last night I went out for a quick look at a 2 Day old moon, it was very clear and cold, infact so cold i packed it in after only about 20 min. outside, as my fingers were getting numb. The image below is very poor quality and was taken with the camera pointed at the EP by hand, without my camera mount, as this was a quick session, I didn't take the time to setup the mount. But now that I have a medium on which i can post the images i take, maybe it will motivate me to dig out the camera mound are set it up again.

Tonight I was Observing Mare Crisium, and was able to see the 2 large craters that reside in side Crisium, Picard, and Peirce.

Date: 13/3/05
Time: 8:00pm EST
Location: Front of 111 Reed
Seeing: Good
Site Conditions: Very cold
Eyepiece Used: 32mm
Instrument: NexStar 114GT

Starting My Astronomy Observation Blog!

Well, here goes nothing, Today I finally decided to collect all my Observing Notes in to a Blog, it makes sense really, everything is easily stored on the internet, I don’t have to worry about backing my data up, and I can even share my findings with the world, if I do ever dare, I mean c'mon, look at my images so far, they are no where near as good as other peoples, but as I always wanted, now I have a little corner on the web to call my own and to post all my observations, I cant hardly wait. Now all I can really do is sit here and wait, and wait, and wait, for the clouds to go away, not only am I going to have to wait for the clouds to move along, I refuse to go out, unless it is extremely necessary when Environment Canada issues a cold weather alert in my area. That’s really all the stipulations I have, no clouds (duh), and no severe cold weather alerts!

Below this blog are all my previous Observations, some are well detailed, some are well, just observations. When I first started to record my observations, I really didn’t know what I wanted to record so that’s why some of them are a bit lacking.





Anyways, Enjoy,

Matthew.
Clear Skies!