November 5, 2011 Viewing Session

Not only was the sky clear enough for me to get images of the sun earlier in the day, but the sky was crystal clear, absolutely no clouds, the seeing and transparency were both as good as I've ever seen them; if not better. I could magnify an object with no distortion due to turbulence only distortion due to trying to max out my magnification power. The only downfall on my original hunt for nebula was the bright Moon light, so I moved onto other objects for the night.

My first target was the Moon, I didn't get any full shots of the moon as I was trying to attempt multiple shots of sections to create a mosaic, but the images I got weren't good enough to put together. Better luck next time I suppose. Instead of that image I have one of the Moon the night before (November 4) showing off the crater Copernicus favorably lit on the terminator (where the shadow and light meet). The right side of the moon is cut off due to a tree being in the way.

Copernicus is lit where light and dark meet. Near center of the Moon. Click to enlarge.

I then moved onto Jupiter, attempting to get images of it that are clear enough to show the banding in the clouds was quite difficult to get with my setup. Attempt after attempt I tried with different settings, increasing shutter speed raising f-stop lowering iso, attempting video. Nothing seemed to work all that great. I tried with a polarizing filter hoping to dim it a bit, but Jupiter is just exceptionally bright. With all the messing around and freezing my fingers off in the 25°F weather I gave up after a little while, this is what I walked away with. More attempts coming soon.

You can just make out the cloud banding across Jupiter, great red spot was not visible. Click to enlarge.

By the time I was done with the Moon and imaging Jupiter I decided to just look up towards Taurus to see if I could see any meteors from the Taurid's that peak on November 12, I saw about 4 total, but each time I saw one my camera was in between shots so I didn't capture any meteors. I will say that I got one heck of a great picture from 16 images stacked viewing the constellations Auriga, Taurus, and Perseus with the dazzling Pleiades just above Taurus. Below and to the right of Pleiades you can see a grouping of stars in Taurus known as Hyades with bright red Aldebaran. To the left of Pleiades you can also see a cluster of stars around the star Mirfak. Towards the bottom center of the picture is the constellation Auriga with the star Capella (looks like a red star), which is actually a star system of four stars in two binary pairs. Inside Auriga I think I'm seeing the small nebula IC 405, but I could be mistaken.

Below I'm showing you what one of the 15 second exposures look like, which is a little more than what I was seeing with my naked eye. Then I'm showing a picture of 16 of those images (about 4 minutes worth of exposure time) stacked to make what I consider my best picture of the stars yet. I plan on making more of these so stay tuned.

 Here is one 15 second exposure showing off a few more stars than visible with the naked eye in my light polluted area. Click to enlarge.

 Here is 16 of those 15 second exposure pictures as I tracked these constellations across the sky. Click to enlarge.