Open: Wednesday, 13 April 2016, 1816 MST Temperature: 90°F

Session: 947 Conditions: Mostly clear

Upon opening the obseratory I synced the observatory clock to WWV. 1827 MST: StarLock OFF. Viewed Mercury, 102X and 203X. Seeing was not very good. Began preparing for prime focus + 2X PowerMate imaging using the D7200 DSLR.

Here are two images of Mercury using HD video recording (15 seconds), 1.3X crop factor, 60 fps, 1/1250sec, ISO 1250, White Balance Auto. The one on the left is a stack of 927 video frames using Keith's Image Stacker and the one of the right is the best single frame image from the video:

Poor seeing was the major factor in the poor image quality.

1845 MST: slewed to Jupiter. It looked good in the DSLR viewfinder. 1853 MST: sunset, maybe, hard to tell due to clouds along the western horizon. 1926 MST: began imaging Jupiter, prime focus + 2X PowerMate. This is a stack of 942 HD video frames (15 seconds), 1.3X, 60 fps, 1/250sec, ISO 1250, White Balance Auto:

1932 MST: slewed to the First Quarter Moon and began imaging, prime focus + 2X PowerMate. These images were taken at 1/250sec, ISO 1250 and ISO 1600:

Then I removed the PowerMate for this prime focus image, 1/400sec, ISO 640:

Mouseover or tap on image

Mouseover or tap on the image above to view a highly saturated version to see "colors" on the Moon.

1956 MST: completed imaging. Viewed the Moon, 102X and 203X. There were many nice sights on the lunar surface this night.

Close: Wednesday, 13 April 2016, 2026 MST Temperature: 66°F

Session Length: 2h 10m Conditions: Partly cloudy

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