Sunday, March 17, 2019

The Moon

Moons, actually.

Ours and Jupiter's.  These moons were the targets of observation for this astronomy session.

"Why moons?" you ask?

Well, it has been many weeks since we had a break in the clouds sufficient to support dragging out the equipment for an astronomy session.  Withdrawal symptoms were manifesting themselves.

This Sunday morning, there was such a break.  Sadly, the Moon was 80% illuminated and dominating the sky.  It was so bright that it was like being under the sky in a light polluted city.  Almost all of the stars were washed out!

I decided to embrace the Moon's presence and use it as an opportunity to play with the equipment.  It was bright enough that I almost didn't need to use any other sort of lighting during the session.

It also turns out that at 0515 EST, Jupiter's moon, Io, was going to make a transit preceded by its shadow.  If you've never watched a shadow of one of Jupiter's moons slowly creep across its face, you are really missing something exciting! 

I had the equipment outside by 0100 EST and started with our Moon.  I figured that I'd spend time there while waiting for Jupiter to rise.

Our Moon

I'm really happy with the field of view offered by the ZWO ASI294MC imager.  I was easily able to capture data of the entire Moonface.  I suppose I was less happy with how quickly the data chewed through the laptop's disk space.  😒

Click on the images to view them in a larger size.


Green Cheese


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