Mars at close approach is amazing and you can really pick up a lot of detail. Taken with a Philips Toucam Pro webcam (lens removed), a Toucam to 1.25″ adapter, and a 2.5x Meade barlow. The telescope was a Celestron C9.25 with a JMI NGF-s focuser, carried on a Losmandy GM-8. The C9.25/NGF/GM8 combo was amazing for planetary imaging, especially under the still Florida skies I was living in at the time.
Best 200 of 2000 @ 10 FPS
My best Jupiter to date, and probably my best planetary [intergalactic] image so far. Taken with a Philips Toucam Pro webcam (lens removed), a Toucam to 1.25″ adapter, and a 2.5x Meade barlow. The telescope was a Celestron C9.25 with a JMI NGF-s focuser, carried on a Losmandy GM-8. The C9.25/NGF/GM8 combo was amazing for planetary imaging, especially under the still Florida skies I was living in at the time.
Best 200 of 2500 @ 10 FPS
My best Saturn to date, and my favorite planet in the solar system. Taken with a Philips Toucam Pro webcam (lens removed), a Toucam to 1.25″ adapter, and a 2.5x Meade barlow. The telescope was a Celestron C9.25 with a JMI NGF-s focuser, carried on a Losmandy GM-8. The C9.25/NGF/GM8 combo was amazing for planetary imaging, especially under the still Florida skies I was living in at the time.
Best 200 of 2000 frames @ 10 FPS
So… Venus. lol. Despite its brightness, I found it a surprisingly tough target. And I desparately needed an IR filter. Taken with a Philips Vesta Pro webcam (lens removed), a Vesta to 1.25″ adapter, and a 2.5x Meade barlow. The telescope was an 8″ Meade LX50. Focusing an 8″ f/10 with a 2.5x barlow, and a webcam, was an absolute beast.
I seriously started to doubt my sanity when the alarm clock went off at 2:45am. I found myself pulling on layer after layer of clothing before dragging my tired carcass outside to join the telescope in the crystal clear 4ºC January weather. The moon looks like countless other full moons I’ve seen before. Maybe a little brighter than usual, but maybe that’s just my imagination.
I was starting to doubt that I’d got the right day, when the show finally started. “Looks like somebody’s taken a bite out of the moon”, I said and smiled to myself. Time to get to those pictures! In between pictures I took occasional looks through my binoculars, but what really fascinated me was the environment. The crisp shadows were slowly dissolving, and the stars were beginning to show! A few times I couldn’t help removing the camera and looking at M42, or a cluster or two. Don’t get much chance for that during a full moon!
Turtle! 22/01/2000
