Foundations of Imaging Program
Click on the photo to see a larger image.
Solar System Objects
1. Entire Solar Disk
I shot this single image was taken with a ZWO ASI color camera, a Stellarvue 72 telescope, a white light filter, all controlled by a ZWO ASI AIR Pro.
The photo was taken at the Peach State Star Gaze 2022 on October 26, 2022 at 2:15 PM.
I worked hard to change the color but each time I changed it, the details (notably the sunspot near 11 o’clock) was more difficult to see.
2. Solar Feature / Filaments
Canary Five / 2020-09-04 / 13:35
This is an image capture from the Canary Five video camera equipped with an H-Alpha filter system.
The arrows point to what are called “filaments” which appear on the Sun’s surface from time to time. They are thought to be caused by magnetic field anomalies.
2. Solar Feature / Sun Spots
Click the arrow to start video. The sun spots are best seen if you maximize the window.
This video was taken at the 2022 Peach State Star Gaze in Sharon, GA on October 26, 2022 at 2:35 PM.
I shot the video from the same rig as described above in the Entire Solar Disk entry.
Somewhat to my surprise, the video shows a bit more detail than does the single shot.
3. Entire Lunar Disk
2014- 01- 16 / 06:52 Local / Decatur, GA
Jack Fitzmier / Zoom Lens at 255mm / Canon T1i
1/250 second / ISO 200
4. Seven Lunar Features
1. Montes Apennius and Montes Alpes
Canary 4 / 2020-09-05 / 00:54
H-Alpha (1 x 3 seconds)
The Moon has several mountainous regions. You can see the long Montes Apennius range near the upper center left of the photo. There is a gap on the right where the range ends. Further to the right another range begins. It is called Montes Alpes.
2. Crater Copernicus
Chile 1 / 2020-09-27 / 03:28
B (1 x 3 seconds)
The Moon is about 10 days old in this photo. At about 10 o’clock near the terminator you can see a
prominent crater. That is Crater Copernicus.
3. Crater Tycho
Canary 4 / 2020-09-06 / 23:50
B (1 x 3 seconds)
The larger crater indicated by the arrow is one of the most prominent features of the Moon.
4. Mare Imbrium and other Mare
2017-09-02 / 22:17 Local / Decatur, GA
Jack Fitzmier / Explore Scientific ED 102 with Canon T1i
1/100 second / ISO 100
The large dark area near the top of the photo, a Mare or a Sea, is Mare Imbrium. Moving down and to the right you can see, in order, Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Fecunditatis, and Mare Nectaris.
5. Lunar Rays
Canary 2 / 2020-09-09 / 01:48
H-Alpha (3 seconds)
At the leftmost end of the Apennines range is the Crater Eratosthenes. To its left and down a bit is the light grayish, larger Crater Copernicus. Notice the whitish lines that emanate from Copernicus and many other craters. These are called rays, and are dust and debris that was cast out of an impact crater.
6. Rupes Recta, Craters Thebit, Birt Domes
2013-01-20 / 18:44 Local / Decatur, GA
Jack Fitzmier / Meade ETX 125 with Canon T1i
1/60 second / ISO 400
I have cropped the photo to show two lunar features, Rupes Recta and the Birt Domes. Rupes Recta lies near the terminator near the middle section of the photo. The photo is orientated as if you are viewing it with the naked eye. Thebit and Thebit A are pointing left, toward Rupes Recta, with Rupes Recta running up from 4 o’clock to 10’oclock. I have placed an arrow to indicate where the two Birt Domes are located.
7. Crater Eratosthenes
Canary 4 / 2020-09-26 / 21:59
H Alpha (1 x 1 second)
The Moon is about 10 days old in this photo. The upper left half of the photo shows the mountain range Montes Apennius. Crater Eratosthenes lies at the left edge of the range. To its left is Crater Copernicus. This is a different photo than D2, above. D2 was taken from the Chile 1 scope. This photo was taken at nearly the same time from the Canary 4 scope.
5. Clair-lunar Effects
In Same Photo
Chile 1 / 2020-10-24 / 3:35
B (1 x 3 seconds)
 |
 |
| Closeup / Crop: Lunar X | Closeup / Crop: Lunar V |
6. Saturn and Mars
Often a photographer will take video of Saturn, Mars, or Jupiter. The video is then broken into its constituent frames and each one is evaluated. The best frames (those taken when the seeing is good, and seeing can change from second to second) are then re-integrated into a single photo. This process is called “lucky imaging” because you are hoping that luck will deliver you some frames when the seeing is good or even excellent.
The Slooh scopes do not use the lucky imaging technique. Rather, they take very short photos and deliver them as R, G, and B exposures. Moreover, because planets are in motion, you cannot “go back” on a subsequent night and take more photos, like you can with things like nebulas or galaxies. Short story: unlike lucky imaging, Slooh’s process does not yield a lot of data in planetary images.
The following planetary images evidence this problem. They are not the “pretty pictures” one sees on the internet. That said, I am often surprised at what a mere three, six, or nine seconds of data can reveal.
 |
 |
Saturn
Canary Four / 2020-09-13 / 20:23
R (1 x 3 seconds) G (1 x 3 seconds) B (1 x 3 seconds)
I integrated the R,G, and B channels and tweaked the results in several ways. Both shots are of the same integration, but processed differently. You can just make out the cloud belts on Saturn itself. Also note the “gaps” in the rings (the outermost is the Cassini Division), of which there are several. The photo shows the outer gap, which forms the outer ring, called Ring A.
Saturn
Chile 2 / 2020-09-19 / 23:50
R (1 x 2 seconds) G (1 x 2 seconds) B (1 x 2 seconds)
I integrated the R, G, and B channels but the result was dominated by green. I used a feature in Pixinsight to reduce the green hue by about 50% and the result was better. Note how Saturn’s body casts a shadow onto the rings on the lower left.
 |
 |
Mars
Chile 1 / 2020-09-12 / 03:51
R (3 seconds) G (3 seconds) B (3 seconds)
With such short exposures I was surprised to see the surface detail that emerged from the integration. But I could not manage to rid the photo of the orange cast. I have posted another version of the photo in grayscale; that may eliminate the orange problem and help with the contrast.
7. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
Canary 4 / 2020-09-06 / 21:10
R (1 x 3 seconds) G (1 seconds) B (1 seconds)
Like F2. Saturn, above, green dominated the integration. I reduced the green using Pixinsight’s SCNR tool to get a better result.
8. Jupiter Phenomena
- 1. Satellite Transit – Io Transits Jupiter
Chile 2 / 2020-11-1 / 00:16
R (1 x 3 seconds) G (1 x 3 seconds) B (1 x 3 seconds)
2. Shadow Transit — Ganymede’s Shadow Transits Jupiter
Chile 1 / 2020-09-27 / 03:38
R (1 x 3 seconds) G (1 x 3 seconds) B (1 x 3 seconds)
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Canary 4 / 2020-09-09 / 22:14:30 |
Canary 4 / 2020-09-09 22:15:27 |
3. Eclipse Research revealed that Io was going to be eclipsed by Jupiter beginning at about 18:44 UTC on September 9, 2020. I ran a simulator in Sky Safari and watched Io suddenly appear, not on the edge of Jupiter, but some distance away. I trained Canary 4 on Jupiter at the proper time and Slooh returned a series of photos of 1 second duration each through a blue filter. The photos were not of very good quality.
In an attempt to bring out more detail, I converted the blue filtered images to grayscale images. After a lot of tweaking, I could just barely make out Europa, but not Io, in the first photo of the series (top left). But the last photo of the series (top right) showed Europa and Io and, as in the simulation, Io was quite distant from the edge of Jupiter. In a final attempt to see what was in the photos, I inverted them. The inverted photos are beneath their grayscale counterparts in the table above, and they show the moons more clearly than the blue filtered shots.
Io was emerging not from behind Jupiter, but from Jupiter’s shadow. Indeed, in the first photo of the series, Io may well have already cleared Jupiter’s edge, and was lurking in the shadow.
4. Occultation — Replaced by Option 13, Lunar Eclipse, see below. I am aware that the Eclipse option could have replaced all of the Jupiter Phenomena requirements, but decided to keep these Jupiter photos in the collection.
9. Pluto and (2) Pallas Movements (verified by plate solving)
 |
 |
|
Pluto # 1 |
Pluto # 2 Chile 1 / 2020-10-04 / 00:19 L (1 x 50 seconds) RA 19h 37m 54.51s Dec -22h 38m 50.6s |
 |
 |
|
Pallas # 1 |
Pallas # 2 |
10. Comet Movement
 |
 |
| C / 2020 M3 (Atlas) # 1 Chile 2 / 2020-09-19 / 06:53 L (3 x 50 seconds) RA 3h 51m 43.30s Dec -35h 5m 43.69s |
C / 2020 M3 (Atlas) / # 2 Chile 2 / 2020-09-20 / 05:16 L (1 x 50 seconds) R (1 x 20 seconds) G (1 x 20 seconds) B (1 x 20 seconds) RA 3h 54m 16.19s Dec -34h 56m 20.04s |
11. Asteroid Movement
 |
 |
|
Ceres # 1 Canary Two /2020-09-04 / 23:38:47 |
Ceres # 2 |
Ceres is one of the largest asteroids in our solar system. Slooh was not giving me a lot of options for catching Ceres. I targeted a nearby star, SAO 191392, for two photos, about three hours apart. Ceres definitely moved in that period of time, as you can see visually and by the RA and Dec data.
13. Lunar Eclipse
The slideshow linked below shows a series of iPhone photos taken during part of a Lunar Eclipse. The Eclipse took place on May 26, 2021. Unfortunately, from my observing spot (my home in Verona, WI, USA) I could not view the entire event. At first (see first shot in slideshow) I thought that clouds might obscure the event. But the clouds eventually moved on. The eclipse began at 4:47 AM local time. My final photo, as the Moon fell below the horizon, was taken at 5:14 AM local time. Note the brightening skies through the series. Astronomical dawn was at 3:15 AM local time and Sunrise was at 5:24 local time. The photos are not of very good quality, but they do show earth’s shadow moving across the face of the Moon. Click here to view the slideshow.
END of Page