View allAll Photos Tagged OPPOSITION
Bitterly cold here but thankfully seeing conditions were conducive to me imaging Mars on opposition day. Poor weather in the early hours meant I was unable to image Mars being occluded by the moon.
Some nice detail is visible including the bright area left-most in the image which is the shield volcano Olympus Mons the largest volcano in the solar system. It rises over 72,000ft or 21.9km! The complex is roughly the size of Poland! It
The curve of the Solis Lacus the so-called "Eye of Mars" (hopefully for obvious reasons!) is visible towards the lower right.
Bluish ice clouds are visible to the lower left limb and on the right limb of the image. The North Polar Hood cloud (top) is still present but is showing signs of degradation.
Imaged with a Celestron C11 and an Explore Scientific Focal Extender. I used separate Baader RGB filters and a ZWO 290MM camera. The filtered images were combined and derotated using Winjupos.
Thanks for looking!!
Mars is at it's closest approach to Earth until 2035. It's still 39 million miles away though. This is my second attempt at capturing a planet and while its not as good as others I've seen I'm happy with the amount of detail I was able to pull out of the bright red dot in the sky.
Equipment:
Celestron CGEM Mount
Celestron Edge HD 800 Scope
ZWO ASI290MC Camera
Altair 60mm Guide scope
GPCAM2 Mono Camera
Acquisition:
Taos, NM: my backyard - Bortle 3
11:45pm, Mars high in the sky.
I shot 100,000 frames at 3 milliseconds averaging ~333fps throughout the imaging session.
Software:
SharpCap
Autostakkert!3
Registax
Photoshop
I began the evening polar aligning my scope with my guide scope/cam and SharpCap. After viewing some objects, and waiting for Mars to rise high in the sky, I put on a jacket, hat and set out to get everything ready. After locating Mars with the camera on my computer screen I fiddled with settings to try to get to 3 milliseconds for my exposures. I realized my focus wasn't perfect so I slewed the scope to a nearby star, Hamal. I used a bahtinov mask to get it as focused as I could and took the scope back to Mars. I got my setting dialed in and began to record. I did several sessions each being just under a minute of recording to get the 100,000 frames at 333fps. I then packed up and went to bed. - Today I used Autostakkert!3 to analyze each frame in my videos. I settled on one session that had high quality frames, since I shot so many I decided to really narrow it down to the best and told the program to stack the best 10%, or 10,000 frames. After stacking was complete I brought the outputted file into Registax. Using their processing tools I tweaked the histogram, color and then used the most powerful set of tools in the program, wavelets. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I know what makes an image "good". So I messed with each layer adding sharpness and de-noise until I got what I feel is a balance between resolution and not making the whole thing look like a digital artifact. I saved that as a TIFF and brought it into photoshop for some color tweaks, a bit of structure in Viveza and a last little bit of sharpness.
I present to you my take on Mars at opposition, 2020.
White Lion - When The Children Cry
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tatKFXlYiY
Come voice your opposition to Putin's War and in favor of peace and Ukraine's freedom and liberty!
Jaded Heart - Live And Let Die
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjZ4tc7yntg
Visit this location at STOP WAR Meeting Space in Second Life
The title is not final, still trying to define a proper word.
Wanted to share this one today because we are having a heatwave today in Sydney, so this one is to cool down a bit :)
You have faced and continue to experience so much opposition, pain, harm, suffering and oppression. In this moment you were working so hard fighting the opposition. You started small, one little step at a time which eventually led to the moments when you put on your glove, picked up the old, ripped, frayed baseball and played catch with your children as you focused on being present with them, soaking up the setting sunlight, breathing, catching and throwing the ball all while in the middle of this great struggle that tries to hold you captive and prevent you from moving, thinking clearly, functioning and participating in life. You can’t do this alone: the supportive people who are in your life, prayer, and God’s loving presence all play a role and ultimately it is you who is choosing to do this work of fighting the opposition.
Saturn at Opposition
August 13-14, 2022
After a night of astronomy at the Von Braun Astronomical Society planetarium, I was inspired to drag my Celestron Edge HD8 telescope out for a look at Saturn. I caught it about 12 hours before the time it was nearest Earth for this year. Seeing was decent, so I got my camera set up and this happened. Not a best ever image (I hope!), but still OK for an imager as rusty as me
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 8
Mount: Celestron AVX equatorial mount
Camera: ZWO ASI 224 MC
Magnification: Explore Scientific 3x Focal Extender
Other equipment: ZWO UV-IR blocking filter
Best 15% of 7152 video frames, preprocessed with PIPP, stacked in Autostakkert!3, and buffed in Photoshop PSCC2022
Mars, 60,102,000 miles distant and two days after opposition, as imaged with an 8-inch Celestron Celestar 8 Deluxe f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope with a vintage Celestron Ultima 2x SV-Series Barlow, and a ZWO ASI224MC astro camera.
The best 16% of 40220 frames, were pre-processed in PIPP, aligned and stacked with AS!3, and wavelets applied in Registax 6 with noise reduction in Topaz.
21_15_33_pipp_lapl4_ap87_conv R6 V3
Downtown Singapore, 2018
Part of the ongoing fine art series: Stacked II - Architecture of Singapore
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SEE ALSO NEXT PHOTO taken at the same place --> flickr.com/photos/sprintist86/739531026/in/photostream/
Taken using my new ND filter. Can see the visible blur of the leaves as the wind blew during the open of the shutter. Nevertheless I liked the way it turned out.
Taken during the evening before sunset, this is the sky adjacent to where the sun is setting.
Changi Beach, Singapore.
#7 on explore WOW my highest so far
Taken from my observatory in Liberty Hill, Texas, USA.
Celestron C8 OTA
Celestron CGEM mount
ZWO ASI183MC camera
Celestron 2x barlow
One minute video captured at 95 frames per second. Processed in PIPP, Auto Stakkert, Registax and Lightroom.
#mars #opposition #astronomy #astrophotography #astronomer #planet #planets #space #telescope #pipp #autostakkert #zwoasi183mc #c8 #cgem #celestron #celestronrocks #homeobservatory #picoftheday #night #sky #nightsky #lookup
UP LBU52 switches Cargill Salt on Jones Island in the backdrop of the Hoan Bridge and the Milwaukee skyline. The bridge was completed in 1972 but did not open to traffic until 1977 due to local opposition. Upon its opening, it connected Bay View with downtown Milwaukee.