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Posts Made By: Alan Friedman

March 16, 2004 06:41 PM Forum: Solar System Observing

jupiter - the movie

Posted By Alan Friedman
Greetings -

Here are two short animations of Jupiter's rotation created with 12 images covering about 25 minutes from Feb 20:

http://www.greatarrow.com/alan/ioanimation_med.gif

and a close-up of Io and its shadow:

http://www.greatarrow.com/alan/io_transit_detail_small.gif

Heavy dewing compromised the resolution of the last few images and brought an early end to observing that night.

enjoy,
Alan

ps - the files run around 400K - will take a few minutes with a dial-up connection.

March 23, 2004 11:39 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

all the double transits

Posted By Alan Friedman
Thanks all of you for posting great images of this. The early spring frigid weather is keeping me indoors - it was cool to see it through your telescopes!

best,
Alan

April 10, 2004 05:13 PM Forum: Solar System Observing

name that moon

Posted By Alan Friedman
Last night I caught a beautiful close conjunction of two of jupiter's satellites. At about 11:10pm EST two moons were stacked with about a moon's width of black sky between them. They looked like a close double star of equal magnitudes but with striking color difference - one yellow/gold, the other blue/gray white.

The color difference and similar size/magnitude made it easy to identify them as Io (yellow) and Europa - with bright Ganymede closest on the other side of Jupiter and dusky Callisto furthest out. I always enjoy playing "name that moon" - trying to identify the Jovian moons using their color, magnitude (or the disk size when the seeing is good) and location to solve the puzzle. A quick check on the S&T chart confirms if my guess was right.

Io and Europa have a pile of close conjunctions and transits this month.

happy easter, all
Alan Friedman

May 31, 2004 04:43 PM Forum: Zeiss

APQ 130 and discmount

Posted By Alan Friedman
Greetings all -

I thought I would share this photo of my Zeiss APQ 130 on Tom Peters discmount. This is a very nice alt-az mounting for the APQ. The load (with my Coronado 90mm filter and binoviewer I would guess about 28 pounds) is carried very well and vibration is minimal due to the close coupling of the dovetail bar directly attached to the APQ tube. The adapter I've made is designed for the A/P portable pier or A/P Baader wood tripod - either of which is a very stable platform for this configuration. The mount itself is extremely compact with no need for counterweight. For serious planetary observations I would prefer a tracking mount, but with a balanced load I find the set-up enjoyable to use at powers of 200X.

clear skies!
Alan Friedman
Buffalo, NY

June 10, 2004 02:09 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

3rd contact - Buffalo, NY

Posted By Alan Friedman
A frame from a video recording captured from downtown Buffalo - the sun just under 14 degrees above the horizon. Taken with an A/P 155 edfs at prime focus and a Coronado 90mm filter/BF30. I was pleasantly surprised with how much could be seen with the Astrovid.

clear skies!
Alan Friedman

June 24, 2004 11:12 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

sun/ 6-23

Posted By Alan Friedman
I was able to get home in time to catch a quick image of the large prominence yesterday as the sun was setting behind the trees. Taken with a digital camera about 6:30pm with an A/P traveler and 90mm Coronado filter. This was a beautiful sight in the eyepiece - I hope many of you had a chance to see it.

clear skies,
Alan Friedman

June 25, 2004 08:49 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

five day old moon

Posted By Alan Friedman
Greetings -

The close approach of the moon and jupiter Wednesday night was a spectacular wide field view through my 4" refractor. Thinking with half a mind after a day at work I figured I could catch in in my Nikon digital SLR - but forgot that while it looks just like a 35mm camera, the frame is about 2/3 the size. So here is the bigger half of that tight pair - one quick exposure through my A/P traveler with 2x barlow projection on an altazimuth mount. Did anyone catch both on film (or a bigger chip?)

best,
Alan Friedman

September 3, 2004 10:21 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Sunset on the Sea of Crises

Posted By Alan Friedman
Hi all -

Here is a panorama of the Mare Crisium at sunset from early thursday. I expanded the field a little to include the Messier twins - among my favorite lunar craters - which were well placed. This was our first stretch of good weather and my first chance to image so far this summer. Unfortunately the seeing was poor and I had to settle for a lower resolution project than I had hoped. A mosaic of single ToUcam frames taken with an A/P 10" mak/cassegrain at f14.6 and assembled in Adobe Photoshop

Thanks for all the superb lunar images posted this summer - they are inspirational.

best,
Alan Friedman


September 17, 2004 05:55 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

sun from 9/4

Posted By Alan Friedman
The sun has put on a nice show in H-Alpha recently. About 1.5 hours separates these two images of AR649 taken on Sept. 4th.

clear skies,
Alan

September 17, 2004 06:31 PM Forum: Solar System Observing

AR 649 from Sept. 04

Posted By Alan Friedman
I posted an image of small sunspot AR649 in H-Alpha to the CCD Imaging Forum. Not a remarkable area, but I needed to get that image finished to work on the more exciting solar streams taken from Black Forest Star Party.

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=251837&poll_id=&news_id=&page=

best,
Alan Friedman

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