Planets Observing Campaign 2022

Latest observations added at the top.

Images taken with 5inch or 6inch APO refractor or 12inch CDK, Celestron 14 EHD, or 13inch Newtonian
Recording with ASI224MC or ASI120MC / ASI174 with FireCapture. Processing in AstroStakkert!3, Registax 6 and Photoshop CS2.

2022-12-15 01:50UT. The year is soon coming to an end and we are collecting some final observations. Jupiter with the Red Spot was nicely visible in slightly better than usual seeing (still not great). The Celestron C14 EHD with 1.5x Barlow lens and the ZWO atmospheric corrector was used to record the AVI video. The 14inch aperture is very dependent on seeing quality. In any worse conditions than this the result is going to be worse than even the 6inch refractor.

2022-12-08 02:34 - 03:36UT The Moon occults Mars. This is the first planet occultation by the Moon in a long time. The viewing angle to the event was not accessible from my balcony, so I setup a small portable mount and Celestron 6 SCT on the parking lot with a good view.

2022-12-08 02:34UT. A few moments before the occultation. As the Moon moves in the frame of view it is not possible to take long AVI sequences for stacking and noise free sharpening. This time only 1000frames AVI had to be the limit.

When the actual disappearance happened I let the AVI run without limit and made a short video out of it.

2022-12-08 03:36UT. As it happens so many times, the exact sot where Mars reappeared from behind the Moon was hard to guess and my field of view missed it. So the planet had already gotten to small separation when I captured this AVI for processing.

2022-11-10 04:56UT. After some passing clouds the was a Ganymede shadow transit on Jupiter and also the other moons were close to the planet. To capture all the moons in the frame the ROI of the camera was made extra wide.

2022-10-31 05:07UT, 05:26UT, 06:16UT. Tonight there was a nice transit of Io followed by Io's shadow on Jupiter. Later there also should have been a visibility of the Red Spot, but haze and clouds didn't allow that observation. The tiny spot of Io when in front of the disk seems to be attenuated by the sharpening software. It is marked by the arrow in the last image.

2022-10-27 05:30UT. Initially the seeing was very bad and only gradually improved over time. Only the nice opportunity to see the Red Spot at center motivated the recordings.

2022-10-24 05:20UT & 05:58UT. It's been a while since this section has been updated. Finally Jupiter is in great view in the South. There was also a transit of Jupiter's moon Io casting a shadow and Io also being visible due to its reddish (volcanic) color. The seeing conditions were rather poor due to a moving cold front. Still I wanted to capture the event. Io's orbital period is 1.76days and quite a number of shadow transits are visible.

2022-01-17 18:58UT. We start the 2022 planets observing campaign with a day time image of Venus near inferior conjunction. This makes for a large thin crescent of the planet. Illumination was 3.3% Inferior conjunction was 2022-01-09 01UT so the observation was just 8 days after that at an elongation of 15 degrees. The elongation will increase rapidly as Venus moves into the morning sky.