I went to QLD Astrofest last week for a night. I just thought I'd share some of the details of the imaging I did. For those not interested in the process, skip the text and just look at the pretty pictures :)

Firstly here's a panorama of the main part of the camp (where light-supression rules were relaxed for laptop/camera use), as well as my scope:

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/astro_pano_cropped_v2.jpg
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/astro_scope.jpg

The night I was there happened to be around the time that Jupiter was in Opposition (i.e. highest point at midnight). Why does this matter? Firstly it's best to view planets overhead as opposed to a low angle, since you'll have less atmosphere to cut through. This results in less atmospheric disturbance and hence the planet you're observing won't twist and warp around as much, allowing you to produce much better images. To illustrate, the Jupiter animations below show the difference between video I captured at 8:50pm (Jupiter at 45 deg elevation) and later at 10:50pm (higher 70 deg) when the planet was almost overhead:

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/850pm_5fps_bw.gif http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/1050pm_5fps_bw.gif

You'll notice the planet still moved around in the second animation, but that's mainly due to my telescope moving in the wind - the planet itself remained circular and the details did not shift around. Simple movement like that can be corrected easily, but twisting/warping due to the atmosphere is much more difficult.

The second reason why imaging at opposition is good is because midnight happens to be well after sunset. So both this particular part of Earth as well as the telescope mirror are at a -relatively- stable and cool temperature. This means minimised temperature gradients and hence less air currents travelling over the telescope mirror, causing warping similar to atmospheric distortion.

Alright so now to the good stuff. With a crapload of mirror/tube/lens-age pushing the telescope to about 5600mm focal-length, I took some videos. Here is a 30sec one taken around midnight:




Below is a heavily processed image produced from 400 of those frames, clearly showing the moon Io in orbit. That's much better than my previous Jupiter attempts, which can be attributed to imaging during opposition instead of when Jupiter is setting (as I did in that thread).

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/20090816_0001.png

Finally I took 25 x 90sec videos, 5 minutes apart. Then produced a single frame from each of them to generate a timelapse animation showing the rotation of Jupiter and Io's orbit spanning 2 hours. Due to animated .GIF limitations, colour animations are of low quality. So I've included the higher-quality B&W one as well to show the actual detail:

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/20090815_0000_bw.gif http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/20090815_0000_rgb.gif

Firefox/Opera users can view the high-quality APNG animation (strongly recommended instead of the GIFs above):

High Quality RGB version (3MB)

Well that's all I managed to image at Astrofest in one night. Thanks for reading.

as always, kickass images Parabol.

f*** that's awesome.

I need a real hobby ffs!

nice one

I need a real hobby ffs!

My thoughts exactly.

Awesome work parabol, as always.

Nice one, that's the event my bro-in-law went to..He's a massive nut with this aswell.

Smart bugger, made his own laythe(sp?) and coding and all that to shape a flat piece of glass to then have a curve in it.. Was cool to see it happening.

Been wanting to try this sort of stuff.. Costs a bit.

cool, might get a scope with my tax return.

a timelapse animation showing the rotation of Jupiter and Io's orbit spanning 2 hours

I thought this was wacky (planet spinning fast!) until I looked up Jupiter's day - its under 10 hours long ... For a massive planet its spinning like a top!

awesome stuff, certainly not as awe awmazing but I like to try and spot satellite passes, I just log on to heavens above, and hope for the best, have seen most so far, The hubble and you can't miss seeing the ISS, as bright as a jet.

Jupiter's day - its under 10 hours long ... For a massive planet its spinning like a top!

The fast rotation also puts an upper limit on how long I can record frames to stack into one processed image. Roughly about 90 seconds per 'snapshot' of the planet. Any longer and the features start blurring out.

Saturn is easier as there isn't much surface detail to be blurred out to begin with (given the resolving ability of my 200mm mirror). So you can image for much longer = more frames to stack = higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Thats awesome para. It almost looks like Io's orbit matches the rotation of Jupiter but apparentlys its more than 4 times longer.

I so wish we had a warp/FTL drive so we could hop out there and take photos with a crappy mobile phone.

I so wish we had a warp/FTL drive so we could hop out there and take photos with a crappy mobile phone.

What do you use to photos?
Hubble Space Telescope, you?
My N95...

I'm doing a gig out at Dalby in November, the sky should be pretty amazing out there.

I thought this was wacky (planet spinning fast!) until I looked up Jupiter's day - its under 10 hours long ... For a massive planet its spinning like a top!

If you think that is surprising, read up on Neutron stars and their rotation.

Nice effort mate, really great shots. Im about to buy my little brother a telescope for this 11th birthday, hopefully he will pick it up with great interest.

Nice work Parabol.
Did you get around to some of the other scopes at Astrofest?

good stuff parabol :D

so how was astrofest? didja get on other people's scopes at all? any cool talks?
i wanted to go but it never eventuated :(

so like, do you always have an idea in the back of your mind where a given planet is at a certain point in time?


Like if I hit you up in the street and said "which way is jupiter", you could point that s*** out?

Did you get around to some of the other scopes at Astrofest?

I didn't have too much time (was busy with my own scope) but I had a look at a nearby home-made scope. Something like a 300mm mirror created by the dude's friend. The mount has been a work in progress for years, every part put together from off-the-shelf parts. The entire contraption looked like a ballistic missile platform :)

do you always have an idea in the back of your mind where a given planet is at a certain point in time?

The obviously visible and major planets/stars/nebula, yeah. I mean once you've gone through the steps of finding/looking at them a few times in the telescope, you pretty much know where to expect them over the next few months - don't really have to memorise nor try very hard. Fairly handy for telling direction at night.

Anyone watching this Space show on 7 ?
pretty cool graphics.