Wesley's Tool-Box

Last Saturday was a pretty good day to see the stars. The smog was lifted and the clouds were barely present during the night. I already made a post about seeing Venus, but I took a look at Jupiter as well. Earth is moving closer to the planet and it'll be at its closest in a month (January 5, 2014), so the view would be nice and big for the next couple of months.

In this composite photo, all four Galilean satellites are present, and the Great Red Spot is visible as a wrinkle in the right end of the lower dark band. 50x magnification on Canon SX50 HS is really at its limit here.

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 1200mm - f/6.5
Filters: Baader M&S applied
Time: 2013-12-07 22:25 - 22:32 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Jupiter: ISO 80 - 1/50s, 19 photos stacked
Satellites: ISO 1600 - 1/5s, 42 photos stacked

It's interesting to see how Venus keeps getting bigger and slimmer at the same time. It's still quite bright in the evening sky - it's visible even before Sun is set. Sunset was at 17:14, but I could already see the planet at 17:05.

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/1000s - f/6.5
Filters: Baader M&S applied
Time: 2013-12-07 17:39 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
18 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Shooting photos of the celestrial objects in a big city come with lots of limitations. Two most notable hindrances are the skyline and light pollution. Tall buildings outright block the view of the lower parts of the sky, while the light pollution makes the sky fuzzy and make it hard to see dim stars, especially near the horizon.

Of course, I'm willing to put up with that. Lots of trial and errors taught me how far I can get away with it. But that's all about static conditions. Weather is dynamic. Not all days are clear. Clouds come and go. So I check the weather forecast and decide when to prepare for a shoot.

But now there's another thing that's throwing a wrench into my observation, and that is this yellow smog that's been coming in for a couple of weeks so far. Even on a clear day, the smog dissipates urban lighting in the sky and compound the light pollution. It's bad for breathing and bad for observation. I hope it clears up soon.

Venus keeps coming closer to the Earth, and it's getting visually larger from here. But since it's in the inner orbit, the crescent is getting thinner as well. Take a look at how it looked like two weeks ago and four weeks ago to see what I mean. I'll be keeping track of the planet regularly as it keeps coming closer. It'll be closest to the Earth almost exactly six weeks from now (January 11, 2014).

Settings: Canon SX50 HS - 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/250s - f/6.5
Filters: Baader M&S applied
Time: 2013-11-30 17:47 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
17 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

I've risked the streaking and went with lower ISO and longer exposure for today's comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy photo. I've experimented with the micro-adjustment head (Longperng TP98AR) that finally arrived late last night after much delay to see if that would help reduce the streaking, but manual compensation proved to be quite difficult. So, after about an hour of fiddling I ended up taking simple long exposure photos just before the Sun came up.

As a note, I waited for another pass of Tiangong-1 half about twenty minutes later, but either the calculations were off or it was too dim (it was supposed to be around magnitude 1) against the brightening morning sky to be seen.

Settings: SX50 HS - 243mm - ISO 800 - 15s - f/5.6
Time: 2013-11-26 06:26 - 06:29 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
7 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8