As you know, there is this photo planner on my site. So I was curious what are people usually looking for. Here’s the results for the last few month.
| query | notes | count |
| m 42 | Orion Nebula | 145 |
| ngc 2264 | Cone Nebula | 118 |
| m 31 | Andromeda Galaxy | 109 |
| ngc 7000 | North America Nebula | 87 |
| c 13 | Owl Cluster | 72 |
| ngc 7000 | North America Nebula | 87 |
| … |
HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
Using the data acquired on 2019-09-02, I put together this nice animation.
This is another image I processed from the set acquired a month ago. The bad weather that’s likely coming and the planets season ending, and some unwanted free time, I am going through my database for images to process.
With the usual gear I laboriously put together the passed months, I imaged Saturn and its moons. HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher Mimas and Enceladus are visible, beyond the cliche Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. By the way, this evening (together with Jupiter) was the first light of the second soapbox hardware.
Luckily — no luck actually, damn hard work — my gear HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher is so automated that all I have to do is flip some switches and turn the tube towards the target. The rest can be done even from the bed.
2019-10-01, 7PM local time
This was an exceptional night with good seeing, rivaling only a night I had in August. About 300k frames went into this Saturn, with the usual setup HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher. In the meanwhile I finished a clone of my mountpushing soapbox, with the exact same components, the exact same soapbox, I only made it a circuit board instead of the cable spaghetti the first one has become after adding and adding functionality, like the buzzer and the RJ45 socket for the focuser. But the soapbox is another story. Overexposing the final stack, to my surprise, reveals some of the fainter moons of Saturn, near the planet – I removed the uneven background from the final picture.
Szaturnusz
It wasn’t a surprise that I caught Jupiter, for I was cooling the telescope for quite a while before sunset, but it was a nice surprise to see Europa’s shadow departing — reminding me of the good old times of this year’s Jupiter season when the planet was visible for several hours (though still as low as it can get, above the city’s turbulent air). HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher Photo taken at 19:21 local time with the Sun just behind the hills to the west of the city.
Io; Jupiter, Europa
HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher, very bad seeing conditions
