Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog: uranus

Monday, September 29, 2014

Uranus and 5 moon animation

Taken over the span of 36 minutes on September 28th, 2014. I was able to image; Titania (mag. 13.9), dimmest Miranda (mag. 16.5), Ariel (mag. 14.4 ~Pluto's brightness), Umbriel (mag. 15.0) and Oberon (mag. 14.1).

First here is the untouched animation showing Uranus at the same exposure of 1sec.

Next I added the color and properly exposed Uranian disk. I shot at a nominal focal length using the 2.5x powermate and the soon to be older Flea3 camera. Next time I'd love to get the QHY and 5x Powernate!

Also relevant, my 4 year old sounded out Uranus to...

YOU

RAN

I love it!

Also the fact i can image down to 16th magnitude at this focal length has me wondering about splitting Pluto and Charon!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Uranus and 4 moons on 2008.10.15

Observation logs

With Labels

Large View

Object: Uranus

Planet

Origin:

ObservationManager - SolarSystem Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2008-10-15 um 22:30:00-05:00
End	2008-10-15 um 23:15:00-05:00
Seeing	3 (fair)
Optics	C8i
Eyepiece	PowerMate (V=812.8)
Filter	Astronomik LRGB Color
Camera	DMK21AF04
Sitzung	2008-10-15 um 22:30:00-05:00

Visual impression

Much easier to find as it's apparent size is larger. Visually it's more grayish-green than Neptune. After processing I found that Neptune and Uranus are very similar in color, photographically at least. RGB exposures are 1s and same Gain settings as Neptune 3min capture time per channel and resulted in about 174 frames per channel, best 100 used (estimate) Moons are at f/25 still, and were 4sec at full gain and 50% gamma

References

Sessions: 2008-10-15 um 18:45:00-05:00

Begin:	2008-10-15 um 18:45:00-05:00
End:	2008-10-15 um 23:30:00-05:00

Weather:	Forecast called for S 4/5 and T 3/5 Actual S: 4-6 T: 2-3/5
Equipment:	I used: Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and custom coriander 8" Celestron C8i SCT DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag Since the 3 day stretch of good seeing in early Sept, I have used the T61 Also used WinXP and IC Capture with the TrueTek Hand Controller for > 1sec exposures
Comments:	To get Uranus and Neptune I had to move exposures beyond 1 second. Currently the custom coriander 1.0.0 does not support exposures beyond 1 second. Even at 1sec and 3.25fps I was unable to get usable data. As quickly as I could I switched to WinXP and IC Capture for camera control. A reboot and install of drivers burned some time, but a valuable lesson in prepareness. I did try to leverage previous whitebalance exercises on Jupiter for Uranus and Neptune. I found tracking and alignment horrible, but since finding 6-7mag planets isn't easy, I decided not to re-align. More and deeper exposures would have helped the moon shots.

>> Observations <<

Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

>> Observations <<

Site: Home