Scope Diagram Astrocamera.Net - Astrophotography by Dave Kodama

A Night of Planets


 
Three of our closest outer planets are now conveniently lined up in the sky for viewing. With the moon near third quarter (close to Mars) and rising early enough to interfere with deep sky photography, I decided to try some planetary photography. The night was comfortable, but the atmospheric seeing was not particularly steady.


The Moon with tiny Mars below about 3 degrees away.
 

All planetary images at left are shown at the same scale. The moon visible with Jupiter is Europa. Also visible on Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a persistent atmospheric storm, which is looking more orange than red to my camera.

These were imaged with a Celestron C11 + 2x Barlow lens with an ASI1600MC one-shot color camera and Firecapture program. Processing was done with Autostakkert, Lightroom, and Photoshop.