Another World - Page 2

Manchurian Taikonaut · #31 (**permalink**) 21-November-2004, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by slotdrag@Nov 15 2004, 04:56 AM
i use a digital sony mavic fd100. i hold it to the eye peice. it seems like i just catching saturn when it is the brights just for a few seconds in the finder.

nice work

Manchurian Taikonaut · #32 (**permalink**) 21-November-2004, 10:35 AM

Rhea and Titan, the Saturn pic isn't good but you can see Titan and Rhea in this over-exposed shot
I have played with the contrast of this pic and tried to blurr out background nosie and any hot-pixels using photoshop. Titan is to Saturn's east, this photo was taken on the 10th .
On the 24th of Nov Titan will be back on the east, then 6 days later on the 30th of Nov 2004, it will be moving over to the opposite side on the west

The next time you have your scope pointed at the planets, see if you can spot Titan

Manchurian Taikonaut · #33 (**permalink**) 24-November-2004, 08:02 PM

Here's a photo of Jupiter and some Moons

Taken with the LX90 and LPI imager on the 13th of Nov 2004. If you rise bright and early in the morning you'll find Jupiter emerging slowly in the morning sky, it is close to the planet Venus.

Io is the 3rd largest moon and the denest Galilean satellite, Europa is a mysterious moon thought to have a water-ice surface and Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system with an orbital period around Jupiter of 7.15 days.

Spacemad · #34 (**permalink**) 25-November-2004, 08:57 PM

Lovely photos, Taikonaut Dongfang Hong. Jupiter looks really clear!

Manchurian Taikonaut · #35 (**permalink**) 03-December-2004, 01:04 AM

Thanks Spacemad I like that Jupiter shot

Like Jupiter , the world of Saturn is like a mini-planetary system. It has many satellites

Spacemad · #36 (**permalink**) 03-December-2004, 01:47 AM

And Cassini has imaged many of these "worlds" close up in the last few months! I was looking at some of the images sent back by Cassini earlier & they are really great. I look forward to seeing more & closer images during the 4 years duration of the mission!

Manchurian Taikonaut · #37 (**permalink**) 04-December-2004, 07:51 PM

Yes, Spacemad I forgot to mention the Cassini-Huygens mission

Unlike the Jupiter moons which often appear traveling in a line across the planet, Saturns moons appear many times above and below the planet because like our Earth the Planet Saturn tips over at an angle relative to the Plane of the Solar system. Moons follow an elongated path in our view, a highly eliptical orbit much like the rings would appear. Those photos above were taken with the LX90 and LPI cam

The final countdown for the Cassini-Huygens lander will be coming soon. Firstly on the 24th of Dec - we need a good seperation in December, the Cassini Huygens ( NASA + ESA )Probe Release should have already occured on the 24th of December 2004 by this stage ( that date is the 25th in Eastern Europe).

The Cassini-Huygens must wait another 21-22 days while the Huygens lander continues on its journey to Titan. The Moon Titan is a fantastic and mysterious world and it would be wonderful to get data from its surface. I myself am cautiously optimistic about this new launch with the probe landing, I need not remind folks how difficult it is to put stuff in space, or put craft down on Venus or Mars or tell everyone the number of probes that have failed. The Titan atmosphere could be a lot thicker or thinner than the lander was designed for and we may not know enough about the atmospheric density profile. However this mission has been fantastic, so far eveything has been going fine and if luck continues then we will be getting fantastic data from Titan and it will push our understanding of the solar system forward. Hopefully all will go well with the Cassini-Huygens lander as it drops to Titan's surface to experience conditions on this wonderful & mysterious world.

Here is another pic I took of the planet Saturn

Spacemad · #38 (**permalink**) 05-December-2004, 02:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Taikonaut Dongfang Hong@Dec 4 2004, 07:51 PM
Yes, Spacemad I forgot to mention the Cassini-Huygens mission

The final countdown for the Cassini-Huygens lander will be coming soon. Firstly on the 24th of Dec - we need a good seperation in December, the Cassini Huygens ( NASA + ESA )Probe Release should have already occured on the 24th of December 2004 by this stage ( that date is the 25th in Eastern Europe).

The Cassini-Huygens must wait another 21-22 days while the Huygens lander continues on its journey to Titan. The Moon Titan is a fantastic and mysterious world and it would be wonderful to get data from its surface. I myself am cautiously optimistic about this new launch with the probe landing, I need not remind folks how difficult it is to put stuff in space, or put craft down on Venus or Mars or tell everyone the number of probes that have failed. The Titan atmosphere could be a lot thicker or thinner than the lander was designed for and we may not know enough about the atmospheric density profile. However this mission has been fantastic, so far eveything has been going fine and if luck continues then we will be getting fantastic data from Titan and it will push our understanding of the solar system forward. Hopefully all will go well with the Cassini-Huygens lander as it drops to Titan's surface to experience conditions on this wonderful & mysterious world.

I have been waiting for a long time the arrival of Cassini at Saturn but now, as you say " The final countdown for the Cassini-Huygens lander will be coming soon." I'm really looking forward to the images that the lander will, hopefully, send back. The images taken by Cassini at its close flyby a little while ago were great & showed some interesting surface details.

Like you, & many,many people around the world, I´m " cautiously optimistic about this new launch with the probe landing" on Titian´s surface!

Everything has gone so smoothly with this mission that a failure with the probe Huygens would be very, very bad luck indeed!

Betelgeuse · #39 (**permalink**) 05-December-2004, 09:36 AM

Nice Saturn shot!

Big Brother Dunk · #40 (**permalink**) 05-December-2004, 08:57 PM

Holy Smokes, there are some awesome pictures in this thread. I'd love to be able to do that eventually.

Spacemad · #41 (**permalink**) 06-December-2004, 07:19 AM

So would I!!! :P You guys really get some great shots!

Manchurian Taikonaut · #42 (**permalink**) 09-December-2004, 06:54 AM

Thanks for the remarks everyone !!

I hope to get some more planets, like photos of maybe Mercury, Pluto, Uranus and Neptune that would be great to get those kinds of shots

Manchurian Taikonaut · #43 (**permalink**) 09-December-2004, 06:58 AM

Here is another one of my Saturn photos

:mellow:

It's one of my better photos of Saturn and its moons, because
I have cheated !! ^_^

Firstly I used an over exposed image, copy and pasted the darker background. I have used photoshop to play with the contrast of the Moons and then toned down the Saturn picture to make the Planet dimmer. :wacko:

Then I've got a normal picture of Saturn, with a shorter exposure taken on the same night and layered it on top of the original image. So the final picture is really a combination of two Saturn photos.

Spacemad · #44 (**permalink**) 09-December-2004, 09:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Taikonaut Dongfang Hong@Dec 9 2004, 06:54 AM
Thanks for the remarks everyone !!

I hope to get some more planets, like photos of maybe Mercury, Pluto, Uranus and Neptune that would be great to get those kinds of shots

It would be tremendous if you could!!

How do you propose to get images from so far away? :unsure: I´d be really excited to see the results!!!

Manchurian Taikonaut · #45 (**permalink**) 10-December-2004, 12:53 AM

I've heard Mercury can be difficult, or almost dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. It's near the Sun, orbits every 88days so it can be risky I've heard, and looking at the Sun will burn the eye out of your head plus it will damage scopes. The key to getting Mercury is knowing when it is at its maxiums western distance from the the Sun or maximum eastern elongation away from the Sun, Mercury is a planet that hasn't been fully mapped. Not the American ships, not the Russian craft, not the Japanese, nor the Europeans, nobody have done missions that fully know what this planet is about.

So it is possibe for backyard astronomers to maybe pick up some surface detail on Mercury that no one has ever seen before. Another way to catch Mercury is having the correct Solar viewing equipment and watching a Transit, and it will appear as a small round black dot crossing the Sun but we'd have to wait until November 2006 to get a nice photo of that one

Manchurian Taikonaut · #46 (**permalink**) 10-December-2004, 01:01 AM

Pluto would be a very hard one, it has a very dim magnitude and this tiny world of rock-ice is the outer most planet in our Solar System. You would really need a powerful camera able to pick up faint magnitude objects, a powerful steady scope and have good viewing conditions and take long photos over a few days much like the American C. Tomgaugh did when he found the 9th planet. I think Pluto lies around Serpens and Ophiuchus now, I would need a fantastic imager to be able to capture it and then check its movement against background stars. Pluto comes into opposition in June of 2005, it will be a most difficult object to capture

Manchurian Taikonaut · #47 (**permalink**) 10-December-2004, 01:07 AM

Here's another Saturn photo - The Face of the Planet Saturn

A picture of Saturn with the LX90 and Meade LPI, you can spot the outer A-ring, the Cassini Gap ( between A & B ), you can see the B-ring and a possible wisp of detail from the C-ring of the Planet Saturn.

The Planet Saturn is close to Earth now, it will soon be at its closest and brightest in telescopes because our orbit and Saturn's are coming close together. Saturn reaches opposition in a few weeks on the 13th of January 2005, the planet is getting closer to the Earth and will be a distance of about 1,200million kilometres or aprox 750 millions of miles. After that Saturn and our Earth will be moving away from each other and it will be harder to spot details.

So get out your Telescopes while you have the chance and watch this fantastic planet !!

Finally here's to wish the Cassini-Huygens lander good luck in Landing on Saturn's Moon

Manchurian Taikonaut · #48 (**permalink**) 10-December-2004, 08:15 AM

Jupiter shot

Spacemad · #49 (**permalink**) 10-December-2004, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Taikonaut Dongfang Hong@Dec 10 2004, 12:53 AM
I've heard Mercury can be difficult, or almost dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. It's near the Sun, orbits every 88days so it can be risky I've heard, and looking at the Sun will burn the eye out of your head plus it will damage scopes.