Waxing Gibbous Moon

I've had a run of bad luck, in which the only decent imaging days have been days with evening meetings. This is a simple, prime-focus photo from two months ago.

Jupiter

This was my first attempt at eyepiece projection. The eyepiece was a 12mm University Optics Abbe Ortho, so if I work with the assumption that the set-back on the eyepiece is 90mm (I haven't yet measured it), the scope was working at 6142mm, or 122x.
I took a run of 32 images—I'd intended to do 99, but inadvertently hit the start/stop button on the remote timer. I have much to learn!

Lynkeos, an astronomical image stacking program for Mac OS X, was used for image alignment, stacking, and processing. I was a bit disappointed by Lynkeos's measurements of image quality, and I got much better results when I hand-picked images of particularly good focus. It may be that I'm not doing the analysis correctly.

Observing conditions were good, not great. There was no moon, and little cloudiness, but seeing and transparency were only 3/5 each, per the Canadian Meteorological Center's model.

In the beginning...

Welcome to Images of Creation.

This blog is an outlet for my astronomy hobby, and especially my astro-photography. My plan is to put up images, and to talk a bit about the specific technologies and techniques that I've used to create them.

A huge kick came late this summer, when after a decade, I finally reached the top of the Astro-Physics waiting list, and was able to purchase a 130mm f/6.3 EDF “Gran Turismo” apochromatic refractor. This, together with my AP 400GTO mount (a bit underspec'ed, I know, but I'd intended to buy the Traveller), and my Canon 40D DSLR are the major components of my imaging kit.

Most of my observing has been done from my front lawn in suburban Homewood, Illinois.