Posts Made By: Mike Wirths

Wes,

Simply amazing! Best res Posidonius I've seen!
Glad you got some good seeing it was a pretty crappy summer overall!


--thanks

Mike Wirths

;>) or it could be a Monty Python movie
And now for something completely different....Posidonius

Your image is wonderfully natural looking, very crisp!!


-Mike

Thanks Wes and all,

I like imaging stuff right on the terminator, since I have an interest in lunar domes this is the place to best see them, under very low solar illumination.

Wes when you get that new 18" will you be using that firewire camera to shoot the planets as well?
I see that Sirius optics has a low profile filter wheel that might work with webcams to do LRGB imaging. I was thinking to (use Jupiter an an example with a 2 minute window for the avi aquistion)use my Atik B&W webcam and shoot a 30 sec L and then 30 sec each for RGB, might be tough cause you would have to refocus slightly after each filter. Or you could just swap in a Toucam to shoot a colour sequence, don't know which would work better.

cheers

Mike W

Roland,

Thanks very much for all of these wonderful planetary nebulae shots!! All of them are superb, and at an image scale where one can see much delicate detail!! I truly think they are much neglected area in astro imaging I would imagine because its pretty tough at high F/ratios.

keep em coming!!

P.S. --would you please try for IC 418 aka the rasberry later in the year, it shows beautiful colour in my large dob, pretty tough though since its so small

Wes,

Wonderfully detailed image of a very interesting area!!! Looks like it may be tommorrows LPOD? Hope so I'd love to see Charles explanation of the area, your pic is probably the most detailed earth image taken!

thanks

Mike Wirths

Kirk,

My 1st reaction when I saw your image was Holy S&$*! Congrats on a fabulous image, superb resolution! I envy you your Fla seeing but not your weather!


keep em coming

Mike Wirths

Wes,

Beautiful pic! I'll have to keep an eye out for that storm, I've never seen one on Saturn visually before, just have to manage to roll out of bed early!

congrats

Mike W

Wes,

1st off congrats on the new scope! And your 1st light Saturn and now Longomontanus (say that 10 times real fast!) are just fabulous!!
The resolution you got on the crater floor is spellbinding. Are you processing this one differently? It has a different "look" compared to your other lunar pics. Is this one done with a 5X's powermate?
I'll bet you're ecstatic that you got 1st light AND good seeing too boot! Last time I had good seeing was in march! One of these days all of us lunar/planetary imagers should all converge on the florida keys to do some imaging together!!! Imagine the fun we would have and how we could all learn form each other!! Maybe that would be something to consider during next years mars opposition!


cheers, hope we get to see some more images from your 1st night!

Mike Wirths

Simply magnificent Wes!!

Back in March I imaged this area and thought I saw some dome-like structures, they were not listed in the ALPO dome list. I e-mailed my pic with the features I thought to be domes to the yahoo group started by Marvin Huddleston (also an 18" Starmaster owner!) but never heard anything from that list about their status. later I found out that another group the Italian GLR (yahoo group Domilunari) was extremely active in lunar dome imaging and study. They thought my features were not domes but ridge swellings. Later a geologist in my local astronomy chapter of the RASC saw the pic and put me in contact with a Ottawa area Petrologist (someone who specialises in lava flow studies), this Guy was going on a trip to see Jim Head at a Planetary conference in Moscow. Jim Head was one of the NASA scientists who taught the Apollo astronauts lunar geology! Anyway Jim thought that the features may very well be undiscovered domes! Your image taken in much better seeing shows the feature labeled A dome (I attached my labeled pic) much clearer. The thing is after sudying your pic I found a feature there that looks like another dome!! This one is bigger than my A dome its clearly seen below and to the right of the tip of Montes Teneriffe at the top of your image. This may be un unknown dome, it was not visible in my pic because the shadow of Montes Teneriffe covered the areawhere the dome lies. If you like I can forward your image to the GLR group to see if anyone knows about this dome, or you can join yourself, its a small group with only 30 or so members. Sorry about the long winded post but its a long story and this is actually an area where modern imagers like yourself can contribute to advancing what we know about the moon!! Plus its exiting to boot!!

Heres the URL for GLR:
http://www.glrgroup.org/home.htm

cheers, and well done on a awesome image!

thanks

Mike Wirths

Good grief Wes when I saw this pic of yours last night I was dumbfounded!!! You must have had some near perfect seeing for short periods that morning!!
This pic is the equal or better to Bruno D's Clavius, and his scope is a 24"! I like the way you processed it too, just awesome!! I know what you mean about almost getting tears in your eyes when you saw the video on your screen. When the seeings really good you just have that epiphany that yup this is THE one!!

--congrats

Mike W