Weasner's Meade ETX Guest Gallery

GUEST LUNAR ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
Last updated: 24 August 2011

Many ETX users have sent examples of their astrophotography. If you have some examples you would like included here please send me a description of how you made the astrophotos and a copy of the images as GIF or JPEG files (due to internet email gateway issues, please send only one image file per message). Send to etx@me.com. Alternatively, if you have created your own web page with your examples please let me know and I'll include a link to your site.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [24 Aug 11]
I woke up in the early hours this morning and so thought I would get some images of the Moon and Jupiter. I used the ETX as it was easier to setup. I did a couple of barlowed images, but the seeing wasn't very good.

I also took this of sunset over Ptolemaeus and Alphonsus this morning with the ETX. It looked pretty impressive visually also with the rays of light across the floor.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [10 Aug 11]
Before I went out this evening and straight after dinner, I imaged the Moon with the ETX. It is still clear out, but cold. Here is my image from earlier this evening.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [7 Aug 11]
Here is tonight's view of the Moon with the ETX-90.

I didn't expect it to be clear after all the rain and hail today here, but I looked out tonight and it was crystal clear! So here is tonight's 7.6 day old Moon. Nice view of the Apennines. I did some visual observing at 186X and the view was really nice and sharp, more detail was visible than was captured in the image. Worth freezing my hands off for!

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [4 Aug 11]
Hi, I did some quick visual observing of the Moon as the clouds were approaching, then tried to get some images. I thought I didn't get it covered, but amazingly I did, just! So here is the Moon tonight.

Hi, Here is tonight's view of the 3.5 day old Moon. The libration is favouring the north to the near the maximum tonight too by the looks. Got it with clouds about as had to go out. Noticed it had cleared up as I was driving out the gate too. Had a look with binoculars at the setting Moon when I got home.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [31 Jul 11]
My wife woke me up early to say the Moon was visible. So I got up and sleepily grabbed some images with the ETX-90. It started clear, but drifting clouds came over the Moon, and wind shaking the telescope hampered imaging, but got enough frames for a mosaic. I have found it best to leave in the background sky (and added it where the mosaic didn't reach). The horns of the Moon are there, but don't show up very well in contrast in my image. Was hard to get the balance right in processing. So anyway, here is the Moon this morning!

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [22 Jul 11]
Here is the 18-day old Moon from last night with the ETX-90.

Submitted by: S-O&M Auno (so.m.auno@bredband.net) [18 Jul 11]
I'm sending you another picture of the Moon (16 days old, waning gibbous). It was taken from my balcony in the centre of Norrkoping, Sweden at 2307 local daylight saving time on Saturday the 16th of July. The picture is stacked by Registax 6 from a video clip consisting of 50 frames. A slight terminator can be seen at the left side of the Moon (the picture is flipped horizontally as seen in the eyepiece). My telescope is an ETX-80AT-TC and I have been using a CMOS colour camera (Venus USB2.0 Camera) with 1280x1024 pixels. I hope you will find the picture interesting enough to post it on your web-site.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [18 Jul 11]
Last night July 14, it cleared just as I was about to head off to bed, so I couldn't resist having a look at the Moon as usual. Here are my images with the ETX-90 again. I have supersaturated one to a pastel-colour look. Thought I would make them the same size and put them side by side.

Here is my ETX Full Moon from tonight! I saw the Moon rising about 5:30pm and it was quite orange. It looked really big and nice. I decided to image early before the temperature dropped further (2 deg C / 36 F low tonight). So Moon was still a bit low as I imaged it.

Today, (US time anyway), tomorrow our time, but July 16 anyway, marks the 42nd anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 on SA-506, to the Moon. From an earthbound observer, here is the Moon tonight with the ETX-90 again. As a kid I remember looking up at the Moon as one of the Apollo missions were enroute (Apollo 15 or 16 I would guess), I wonder how long before we will be able to do that again?

Moon last night was Humboldt on the terminator. Here is an enlargement and crop of the frame.

Here is tonight's 16-day old Moon with the ETX.

Here is the 17 day old Moon tonight, July 18 with the ETX-90. Another nice clear cold night here. Mike here: I just learned that Maurice received an award in May 2011 for his lunar work. Click the link to see the award. Congrats to Maurice!

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [14 Jul 11]
Well, the sky cleared after all! Still wet out and windy but I managed to get this image with the ETX-90. Copernicus was looking good.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [9 Jul 11]
Here is tonight's First Quarter Moon taken with the ETX-90. It was a bit windy out, and clouds about, but by being patient I got it all imaged. The Lunar-X is visible tonight too I see.

Submitted by: Maurice Collins (mauricejscollins@hotmail.com) [5 Jul 11]
Caught the Moon tonight low over the neighbors roof with another houses chimney putting smoke in the immediate vicinity. But managed to move around the yard with the ETX-90 to get the images as it was very nice to see the Moon again. Also observed an occultation of SAO 97773, a mag 6.66 star at around 0612UT. The neighbors outside light went on just as the star was about to go behind the Moon, and the light was shining on the objective so I had to shield it with my hand. But I did see the star get occulted ok. Don't see too many occultations, so always nice when they occur. Earthshine was nice too.

Wasn't sure I was going to get the Moon tonight as to start with there were some high clouds about. But after dinner it was clear, though some haziness over the Moon. I used the ETX-90 again as the Moon is a bit low from my usual observing spot. So imaged this from the deck of our house.