All of the above DSO images were taken with a cheap ($50 CDN) second hand 50 mm focal length F1.8 (stopped down to F2.8) 27 mm aperture M42 screw mount SLR lens on a Color CrystalCam camera piggy back mounted on a crudely polar aligned Orion EQ3 mount. I also used an IR Blocking filter (15mm square 1.1 mm thick) purchased from Edmund Industrial Optics, which starts cutting off all light above 650 nm - which in retrospect was probably not a good idea for emission nebulas like Veil or North American Nebula. The site (village of Mistusinne in Saskatchewan Canada) is at magnitude 6.5/7.0 visually and is about 100Km / 60 miles away from the nearest town with more than 500 people in it - really dark spectacular skies. Due to extreme smoke drifting down from the fires burning in Alaska, Yukon and Northern British Columbia and then some major cloud systems moving in, I did not get time to go back and image some other objects with the 100 mm and 200 mm lenses - especially M31 which would have filled the 640x480 frame with a 200 mm lens. Processing on these images is minimal and they are almost the same as what comes out of the camera.

"M31_300S128B213G.jpg 76Kb" Taken on August 20th, 2004 Stack of five 300 second exposures, dark frame subtracted with minor level adjustment and cropped. Field of view 2.5 degrees by 2.0 degrees covering the Andromeda galaxy and it's satellite galaxies M110 and M32. Note the dust lanes just appearing in the Andromeda galaxy.

"NGC869w884_180S149B221G.jpg 76Kb" Taken on August 20th, 2004. Stack of six 90 second exposures, dark frame subtracted with minor level adjustment and cropped. Field of view 2.5 degrees by 2.8 degrees covering the Perseus NGC 869 and NGC 884 open double clusters.

"M16wNGC6604_90S151B221G.jpg 76Kb". Taken on August 19th, 2004. Stack of six 90 second exposures, dark frame subtracted with minor level adjustment, rotated and cropped. Field of view 2.8 degrees by 4.0 degrees covering the Eagle Nebula and the NGC 6604 open cluster.

"M27_180S149B221G.jpg 76Kb" Taken on August 20th, 2004. Stack of four 180 second exposures, dark frame subtracted with minor level adjustment, rotated and cropped. Field of view 2.8 degrees by 3.1 degrees covering the Dumbbell Nebula and surrounding area.

"M11_90S151B221G.jpg 76Kb" Taken on August 19th, 2004. Stack of six 90 second exposures, dark frame subtracted with minor level adjustment and rotated. Field of view 3.0 degrees by 4.0 degrees covering the Wild Duck Cluster and surrounding area.

Luna_04_05_30_rills2xl.jpg

Luna_04_05_30_rills3x.jpg

Jupiter_040501_000112.jpg

Luna_040430_2340.jpg

Luna_040430_2330.jpg

Luna_040430_2300.jpg

"Luna_04_05_30_rills2xl.jpg 76Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using CrystalCam Color at 15 fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit 5x5 mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on May 1st, 2004. Composite of three images. Note intricate lava flow maria ridges and rings along the terminator from Mons Romker at the north, to Schoteri Valley and ending near Marius Crater.

"Luna_04_05_30_rills3x.jpg 112Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 4.9 meters with 2X Barlow, using CrystalCam Color at 7.5fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit 5x5 mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on May 1st, 2004. Composite of eight images. Note intricate lava flow maria ridges and rings along the terminator from Mons Romker at the north, to Schoteri Valley and ending near Marius Crater.

"Jupiter_040501_000112.jpg 12Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using CrystalCam Color at 7.5fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit 5x5 mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on May 01th, 2004. Probably my best Jupiter image for 2004, which shows exceptional details in Jupiters atmosphere in the white spot vortexes and thin bands.

"Luna_040430_2340.jpg 208Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using an CrystalCam Color at 15.00 fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 30th, 2004 23:40 MST. Composited sequence along southern Lunar Terminator. Exceptionally low turbulence produces an incredible amount of detail along the lunar terminator.

"Luna_040430_2330.jpg 172KB". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 4.9 meters with Antares Barlow, using an CrystalCam Monochrome at 30.00 fps from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 30th, 2004 23:30 MST. Composited sequence along southern Lunar Terminator. Exceptionally low turbulence produces an incredible amount of detail along the lunar terminator. Note the intricate series of rills and fault zones to the west of and on the crater floor of Gassendi.

"Jup_04_04_02_2326MST 432Kb - 1702x4603 pixels". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using an CrystalCam Monochrome at 15.00 fps from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 30th, 2004 23:00 MST. Composited sequence along southern Lunar Terminator. Exceptionally low turbulence produces an incredible amount of detail along the lunar terminator from North to South poles.

Luna_040426_2225.jpg

Luna_040425_234151.jpg

Luna_040403.jpg

Luna_040328.jpg

"Luna_040426_2225.jpg 104Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using CrystalCam Monochrome at 30.0 fps from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 26th, 2004. Exceptionally low turbulence allowed a lot of fine detail to be captured near Cassini and the Alpine Valley.

"Luna_040425_234151.jpg 56Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using CrystalCam Monochrome at 30.0 fps from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 25th, 2004. Notable features include Poisidonius and ridges to the west.

"Luna_040403.jpg 208Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using an CrystalCam Monochrome at 15.0 fps from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 30th, 2004 23:30 MST. Composited sequence along southern Lunar Terminator, most interesting feature is Schroter's Valley. Seeing conditions were average, but still a fair amount of detail was captured.

"Luna_040328.jpg 52Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 4.9 meters with Antares Barlow, using an iRez Stealth color at 7.50 fps from Calgary Alberta Canada on March 28th, 2004. Composited sequence of Rills near Triesnecker and Hyginus grabbens to the north. Seeing conditions were average, but still a fair amount of detail was captured.

Triple Shadows QuickTime Movie 888.0 Kb

Triple Shadows AVI 1.2 Mb

"Triple Shadows QuickTime Movies and AVI - 640x480 size" On March 27, 2004 I recorded most of the 5.5 hour triple passage of Io, Ganymde and Callisto's shadows as they crossed the face of Jupiter. Unfortunately an adjacent high rise apartment building blocked out approximately 65 minutes of the event, but luckily this happened just after the triple shadow occured. Additionally air turbulence increased as time progressed, so the last few seconds of the video are suffered for it. The movies are time compressed, so each frame in the movie represents 1 minute of actual time and the 15.74 second movie (excluding notations and transitions) represents 4.2 hours of real time. Each frame in the movie is a composite of up to 230 captured frames which were stacked using Keith's Image Stacker and a total of 59,000 frames were processed. The final 236 frames in the movie were sequenced into a movie, then imported and aligned with Sharpest Frame to create the raw video footage. After that I used ReelEdit to add the titles/graphics and then compress the final movies in QuickTime movie format with the Sorenson 3 Codec and a Windows AVI with using the DIVX 5.1 codec.

Double Shadow QuickTime Movie 496Kb

Double Shadow AVI 520Kb

"Double Shadow Movies and AVI" - 640x480 size On March 20, 2004 I recorded the 3 hour double passage of the Moons Io and Ganymede as their shadows crossed the face of Jupiter. At the end I also managed to capture the emergence of Europa from Jupiter's shadow. During the recording of the video footage, thin wispy clouds moved through the area and darkened the video - which I compensated for by increasing the brightness. However when the clouds thinned, the image of Jupiter brightened up and as a result was too bright for several frames during that period. The movies are time compressed, so each frame in the movie represents 1 minute of actual time and the 11.5 second movie represents 2.9 hours. Each frame in the movie is a composite of up to 230 captured frames which were stacked using Keith's Image Stacker and a total of 39,000 frames were processed. The final 172 frames in the movie were sequenced into a movie, then imported and aligned with Sharpest Frame to create the raw video footage. After that I used ReelEdit to add the titles/graphics and then compress the final movies in QuickTime movie format with the Sorenson 3 Codec and a Windows AVI with the DIVX 5.1 codec.

Sat_04_03_13_2108MST 12Kb

Jup_04_03_27_2011MST 12Kb

MVMJS_04_03_28 20Kb

Jup_04_04_02_2326MST 12Kb

"Sat_04_03_13_2108 12Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using an iREZ Stealth FW Camera at 15 fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on March 13th, 2004 21:08MST. Low turbulence allowed a good capture of Saturn's A and B rings, cassini division, some faint banding in the atmosphere and the darker polar regions.

"Jup_04_03_27_2011MST 12Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 3.0 meters with 2X M42 converter, using an iREZ Stealth FW Camera at 7.5 fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on March 27th, 2004 20:11 MST. This image was taken 1.5 hours before the triple shadow event, just as the Great Red (Orange) spot was rapidly rotating towards the east edge of Jupiter. From left (west) to right (east) we have Io, Ganymede and Europa, with Callisto just barely visible as a faint smudge on the north eastern edge of Jupiter.

"MVMJS_04_03_28 20Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 4.9 meters with Antares Barlow, using an iREZ Stealth FW Camera at 30 fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 2th, 2004 23:26 MST.This single composite images shows Mercury, Venus, Mars ,Jupiter and Saturn as they appear with the same focal length and camera, taken within a 1 hour period. Viewing conditions were "bad" with abundant air turbulence to the west.

"Jup_04_04_02_2326MST 12Kb". Taken with MAK 127mm, focal length 4.9 meters with Antares Barlow, using an iREZ Stealth FW Camera at 3.75 fps in 640x480 Bayer 8 bit mode from Calgary Alberta Canada on April 2nd, 2004 23:26MST. Calm skies and low turbulence allowed good capture of Jovian atmospheric detail including the Great Red (Orange)Spot

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CopyRight (©) Milton Aupperle, 2010 ... All Rights Reserved... Last Updated July 19, 2010

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