Mars Before and After the Phoenix Lander

While I didn't manage image anything as stunning as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotting the lander's decent with the chute. Nor did I manage to spot the features around the landing site as it was on the night-time side of Mars at the time of both my captures. I did manage to get 2 shots of Mars on two consecutive nights. One just before the Phoenix Lander's successful arrival and the next night just after the arrival.

Bad haze and clouds rolled in just as the 2nd night's capture began while my friend Robert Kintner and I setup for an observing session at my house.

Thanks for looking!



Mike

Saturn's Encaldus Transit in poor seeing 2008-04-25

It has been a poor winter and early spring for Astronomy, so I've been trying to take what I can get. Fighting poor (1/5) transparency and hazy clouds, I think I managed to eek out a portion of the Enceladus transit.

First is a simulation from Cartes du Ceil. (Click on for 2frame animation of what I think I've captured).


Next a still view of both times from the animation.


Thirdly, a composite of moons including Mimas (look closely near upper left of rings.



With labels of what I think i see (please post a response to let me know what you see)


My Flash Animation.
http://www.geocities.com/maphilli14/Astronomy/Saturn/Saturn-080425-Animation.html

Happy hunting!

Mike

Having fun with some bad seeing on Saturn

Trying to make the best out of some bad weather here. I played around with a lousy Saturn capture and uploaded the raw video to YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3D2ITxaXlDw

And Posted my processed image on my Picasa Photo page:

http://picasaweb.google.com/maphilli14/MichaelAPhillipsAstronomyMechanicsGallery/photo#5192603427829467522

and I'm tying it all together with my blog! A bit of a front end portal to my.... well... hobby.

MIke