On returning home from a very successful SAS Christmas meal, I could see Jupiter blazing brightly through a gap in the clouds, just a day or so away from opposition. In spite of the windy conditions, I got my Meade ETX 125EC deployed in the shelter of a doorway and using a zoom eyepiece, was able to see some lovely cloud belt detail on Jupiter and the 4 Galilean Moons with two each side of the planet. I then used my Apollo-M Mini camera with x2 Barlow lens to record a few mono SER's in Astro DMx Capture; one of which I stacked 15% of the 2139 frames in Autostakkert!4, wavelet processed the Tiff in Registax and finished it off in Adobe Photoshop 2024. The FOV resulting from using the x2 Barlow resulted in me only being able to capture three of the moon's in the frame; Io on the left, Europa close to the planet's limb on the right and Ganymede further out. Later on I watched as Europa inched ever closer to the planet's disc and then began its transit across it.
Click on an image to get a closer view
With the skies clearing and the wind dying down, I continued to enjoy some fine views of Jupiter and then some nice views of Mars through the ETX125 and also the Great Orion nebula M42. As the skies remained clear, I was able to deploy my SkyWatcher Esprit 80 ED on my iOptron CEM26 mount to capture an hour or so of data on M42 and the Running Man nebula in LRGB and SHO with my ASI 533MM pro camera and filter wheel; taking 60s subs. With more settled conditions following on and with much less wind, I was then able to take some longer (5 minute) exposures on the Flame and Horsehead nebulae in LRGB and SHO. I stacked and processed the data in Pixinsight and finished it off in Adobe Photoshop 2025. The M42 LRGB composition comprised 36 minutes in total which I processed separately, and the SHO data set, just 28 minutes which I then combined with the LRGB data to produce a blended LRGB/SHO image comprising 64 minutes in total.
The Flame and Horsehead nebulae were also imaged in LRGB and SHO, with 170 minutes of LRGB takenl and 75 mins of SHO. These data sets were processed separately as individual images again using Pixinsight and Adobe 2024.
Chris Bowden
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