Posts Made By: Jason Higley

Mars
http://setisociety.org/mars4Jan08MeadeElecEPproc3.jpg

Taken Jan. 4th using Meade Electronic Eyepiece, 6" newtonian, ~400 frames saved using home DVD burner (no pc/laptop present to record) and manually ripping each frame to a bitmap, software - old copy of Power DVD full edition, Registax 4, Roxio Photosuite 5.

Regards, Jason H.

Over the next two days the Messenger spacecraft will be sending new images of never-before-seen parts of Mercury. Here's and article on it with a new image.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=114

I've taken that image and re-processed the heck out of it at

http://setisociety.org/NewMercuryImageprocessed.jpg

(here is the original for comparison)

http://setisociety.org/NewMercuryImage.jpg

There will be much better ones coming from them.

Regards, Jason H.

I happened to see that Messenger also imaged Venus at

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=88

so I said to myself, what the heck, let me see if processing that image will help, so here is a gently processed one (which I prefer)

http://setisociety.org/MercuryMessengerVenus-gentle.jpg

and here is an aggressively process one

http://setisociety.org/MercuryMessengerVenus-aggressive.jpg

here is the original for comparison

http://setisociety.org/MercuryMessengerVenus2ApproachImage.jpg

credit images to NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Regards, Jason H.

This is a new Mercury image posted at the Messenger website Jan. 14th

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=115

I've re-processed it and made it 2x larger at

http://setisociety.org/mercurytermEN0108693445M.jpg

on mine you can see multiple stacked craters on the terminator.

Here is the original on their website for comparison
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/EN0108693445M.jpg

and in case their link doesn't work, here is a backup copy of theirs on my website:

http://setisociety.org/mercuryEN0108693445M.jpg

Credit images to NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington (and the re-processed one to me :^)

Regards, Jason H.

In my never-ending quest to reach the bottom, last night I bought a closeout 5MP Canon Powershot A530 for only $50 from Sears.

Saturn came out pretty good from tonights (Feb.02 a.m.) run on the 6" Criterion.

http://www.setisociety.org/Saturn02Feb08-MVI_0074regprocrox.jpg

(this point-n-shoot did an O.K. 15 second exposure of the Orion Nebula (unguided, I don't even have a polar scope on the old rickety Criterion mount, and it's my first nebula shot so don't grit your teeth.)

http://www.setisociety.org/IMG_0028roxtwo.jpg

I think those came out O.K. for a $50 point-n-shoot camera on a 6" Criterion, AFOCAL.
Regards, Jason H.

Hi, I posted over in Solar System forum that the other night I bought a closeout Canon Powershot A530 (a 5 megapixel point-n-shoot) for only $50 from Sears. Before grabbing this afocal Saturn stack on a 6" Criterion

http://www.setisociety.org/Saturn02Feb08-MVI_0074regprocrox.jpg

I said what the heck, I'll point it at Orion for the maximum 15 second exposure the camera allows at M42 (unguided, I don't even have a polar scope on the old rickety Criterion mount, and it's my first nebula ever.)

http://www.setisociety.org/IMG_0028roxtwo.jpg

I was surprised that there was that much color in 15 seconds after trying and failing to do it with a Kodak point-n-shoot (with 60 second exposures) so I reduced it in size, cropped some bad stars, and smoothed a little for noise:

http://setisociety.org/IMG_0028adobe3.jpg

then I smoothed it more (bad stars not cropped.)

http://setisociety.org/IMG_0028adobe.jpg

I tried to stack some other shots of M42 in Registax with this one hoping to eliminate some noise, but that didn't work out so I just processed the single frame. I know that I need to learn how to do darks, flats and get a real mount, but here is the question,

BASED ON WHAT YOU GUYS/GALS SEE WAS CAPTURED IN 15 SECONDS ABOVE IN A 6" SCOPE, CAN YOU RECOMMEND ANY OTHER GOOD 15 SECOND NEBULA TARGETS FOR THIS POINT-N-SHOOT, OR IS ORION SO BRIGHT THAT THAT'S ABOUT IT?

SHOULD I JUST TRY FOR GLOBULARS? WILL M31 OR OTHER GALAXIES SHOW SOME SHAPE IN 15 SECONDS IN A 6"?

Regards, Jason H.

I bought this camera several weeks ago at Sears for $50. These are my 1st/newbie star cluster images:

M3
http://setisociety.org/M3-PROCESSED.jpg

M35
http://setisociety.org/IMG_0107ROXI.jpg

Both are single exposure of 10 seconds (my mount is so bad that the 15 second shots, the maximum duration shot the camera can do, trailed too much.)

Regards, Jason H.

Lunar Eclipse Movie (2.25 megs Windows Media File movie)

http://setisociety.org/Lunar-Eclipse-20Feb08.wmv

I manually aligned each of the 159 images in this movie using a late 1990's version of Adobe PhotoDeluxe. Gaps are due to either clouds or DVD recorder issues. Taken with only a Hitachi DVDCAM (that I don't recommend because of a quirky DVD mechanism) but which has a nice 30x optical zoom.

Regards, Jason H.

These are not NASA APOD, A-Mart APOD, LPOD or even K-Mart worthy. Just posting some drive-by tourist shots of the Moon from last night:

http://setisociety.org/Moon-IMG_0379.jpg

http://setisociety.org/Moon-IMG_0370.jpg

http://setisociety.org/Moon-IMG_0349.jpg

http://setisociety.org/Moon-IMG_0312.jpg

All are single exposures from the Canon A530 through a 10 mm eyepiece. The above may be a little softer than others I've done with the Criterion as it seems I've slightly worsened my collimation when fiddling with a Cheshire eyepiece (it seems the secondary spider arm doesn't have enough sideways motion to make it correctly aligned. More tweeking is in order.)

Regards, Jason H.

Saturn one night past opposition

http://setisociety.org/saturnMVI_0298tworegproc.jpg

it's not the big leagues, but considering the stats...
Canon Powershot A530 in video mode (422 frames) no laptop/PC present, afocal using Orion SteadyPix through 10 mm eyepiece, barlowed with a 2x Ultima but not zoomed to maximum (but I pushed it as far as I thought it could go.) 6" Criterion RV-6. The seeing seemed pretty good.
Regards to all and thanks for looking, Jason H.