a few far falcons

during the day, falcon-9 launches are visible for 100 miles.  at night, they can be visible for hundreds of miles, and just after sunset, the backlit plume can be seen from even further away.  

having failed to spot daylight falcon-9 launches from my office at 150 miles away and home (175 miles), i was pleasantly surprised to catch this shot through a window at work during relatively bright daylight, 15 minutes before sunset:

Falcon-9 1/23/24
5 pm pacific 15 minutes before sunset
Long Beach, CA

that being said, the rocket was unimpressive, not distinguishable from a jet from LAX.  50x zoom with my cellphone showed a trail that looked more rocket than jet:

Falcon-9 1/23/24

Later that week...

a neighbor a few houses down from ours has a front yard facing a T-intersection.  this gives the lowest horizon towards Vandenberg in the area.  coincidentally he's a huge spacex fan.  i strolled down the street 2 minutes from lift off and there he was on his front steps with the count down going.  

caught the rocket rising up much sooner than on previous attempts from his front steps.  also it seemed more red on this evening:

Here's a frame from a video as it crossed with it's plume overhead.  a very noisy low light capture, i was going to darken and blur the background, bet elected to own the noise and lighten the background, rendering this impressionist image:

Falcon Crossing Trees at Night

lastly here are two short video clips of the launch at night:

image details:

samsung galaxy S22 ultra

1/23/24

daylight images

5 pm pacific, 15 minutes before sunset

Long Beach, CA

1/28/24

Eastbluff, CA

10 PM pacific

huge solar prominence 1/10/2024

prominence 1/10/2024 21:11.3 UTC (1:11 PM local)

working from home thanks to covid, saw a medium size prominence with a thick short/wide T-shaped structure below it, very bright in the morning.  knew something dynamic was happening...brought my grab and go out at lunch and saw this huge prominence.  later looked like medium prominence with an extension shooting out.  happy to catch a glimpse of what was obviously a very dynamic process.  

Sun Ha 1/10/24 composite (exclusion mode)

Sun Ha 1/10/24 composite

Sun Ha 1/10/2024 21:17.4 prominences

Sun Ha 1/10/2024 21:15.6 full disk double stacked

Sun Ha 1/10/2024 21:19.9 late prominence

Prominence 1/10/24 21:10.0 to 21:20.4
short animation of arch
10 minute pause
short animation of  linear extension

Image details:

Lunt 60/50 double stacked B1200 [later images single stacked]

manual guiding with alt-azm mount

zwo ASI 174MM

20 second captures

best 20 frames

close up of prominence at top of page upsampled 1.5x

East Bluff, CA

1/10/2024

21:10-21:20 UTC

1: 10 PM to 1:20 PM Local

the animation was a challenge due to differing exposures and filters (double vs single stack) as well as field rotation.  

My circa 2010 lunt solar scope had developed a tiny usable field.  finally decided to "look into it" and found the blue blocking filter almost entirely covered by rust

10 bucks for a new blue blocker
and i've got a big clear field again 😎

AI meets Jupiter

 Warning: boring details regarding planetary image processing ahead.  

Planetary imaging is best done these days with a web cam capturing short video segments with as many frames as possible.  software then combines the sharpest frames, discarding frames distorted by atmospheric turbulence.  the "stacked" image is that further sharpened.  too much sharpening produces unsightly artifacts enhancing noise inherent in the imaging process, rather than fine detail.  too little sharpening leaves a blurry image.  recently "AI" techniques have been used to sharpen images or "denoise" sharpened images.  the results have been very impressive, but controversial.  

Here's an image of jupiter with very conservative sharpening.  the image is nice and smooth, but blurry:

Jupiter 12/16/2023 05:20 UTC

next up is an image with aggressive sharpening applied.  fine details are more evident, but there are clearly sharpening artifacts, sometimes referred to as "noise":  

next a conventional "denoise" has been applied, removing the artifact, blurring the image slightly, but preserving some of the sharpening for a smoother sharpened image:

here's what topaz denoise AI did to the sharpened image:

the image is far more aesthetically pleasing than the others, both silky smooth and razor sharp.  this is what has generated the controversy.  there are 2 main objections:

1. the image is too smooth.  
-personally i think this is silly. hubble images of jupter are smooth and sharp at this scale, why not mine?  

2. the AI generates structures that are not real.  
-now this is a problem.  a number of advanced imagers have demonstrated AI processed images with structures that look real, but aren't actually there.  pretty damning criticism, thus all imagers submitting images for scientific work are avoiding AI processing.  i think you can make the case that the false AI structures are the result of pushing the AI processing too far, but now that the objection has been raised, AI processing is widely condemned in the planetary imaging circles.  

Image Details:

i'm submitting images to ALPO so now include image detail in the frame for the submission.  

cloudy nights thread on the topic--mostly civil, only one post was banned (but you can still see it's residue)

more jupiter images 2023

Renowned amateur astronomer Christopher Go appealed to the OCA for images of Jupiter so I've been cranking them out and working on my technique.  

Jupiter 11/26/23 05:53.3 UTC

Jupiter 11/26/23 and Io

Jupiter 11/29/23 05:51.9 UTC 

Jupiter 12/6/23 07:10.6 UTC RGB
"chimney open"

imaging details:

details mostly provided in image annotations

new laptop is allowing much higher capture rates without dropped frames, especially at larger frame sizes ;) 20,000 800x800 frames in 90 seconds!

the downside is the video files are much large so the terabyte hard drive fills up after 3 or 4 imaging sessions :(

processing in autostakkert also takes much longer

tried stacking unsharpened images in winjupos, then sharpening the combined image

the result was horrible

so will probably be doing more sharpening prior to winjupos combine

tried oversharpening final images, then used topaz denoise to remove sharpening artifacts

the result was very impressive

working on planetary autoguiding with firecapture.  having trouble with RA oscillations occasionally throwing the planet way out of the frame (editing these frames out with virtualdub).  

Jovian navigation

Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet in our solar system, with a day lasting only 10 hours.  thus Jupiter's Great Red Spot (aka small salmon spot) is only visible for a few hours each day.  so if you see it one night, it will be visible 4 hours earlier or 6 hours later the next (multiples of 10 mod 24).  this makes it tough to catch night over night.  it's visible for about 2 hours and can be followed rotating across the face of the planet during that time.  

Jupiter
11/22/23 05:22 UTC
2023-11-22-0522_5
CM1 60.8, CM2 59.9, CM3 102.6

I recently noticed my planetarium software wasn't getting the position of the great red spot quite right. so off to the rabbit hole of jovian navigation...the short version is that clouds in jupiter's atmosphere do not rotate a constant rate.  

a planetary frame of reference was created, roughly defined by the position of the great red spot.  however, the great red spot's rate of movement across the surface varies with time, so it's position has to be intermittently updated relative to the planetary reference system.  

the following is largely verbatim from references listed below:

Because Jupiter is not a solid body, its upper atmosphere undergoes differential rotation. The rotation of Jupiter's polar atmosphere is about 5 minutes longer than that of the equatorial atmosphere (wikipedia).

Three systems are used as frames of reference for tracking planetary rotation, particularly when graphing the motion of atmospheric features. System I applies to latitudes from 7° N to 7° S; its period is the planet's shortest, at 9h 50 m 30.0s. System II applies at latitudes north and south of these; its period is 9h 55 m 40.6s. System III was defined by radio astronomers and corresponds to the rotation of the planet's magnetosphere; its period 9 h 55 m 29.710s is Jupiter's official rotation (GJI).

"most (but not all) higher-latitude atmospheric disturbances including the Great Red Spot and the three white ovals move only slowly in system II." (GJI)

the Red Spot was at Jovian System II longitude 46° in November 2023 and continues to drift 1.75° per month, based on historical trends noted by JUPOS (sky and telescope)

note the planetary image above is annotated with 3 different central meridian (CM) positions, one for each system.  

historical trends and recent observations are listed at JUPOS the organization associated with winjupos, a sophisticated planetary mapping program designed for advanced amateur astronomers to track planetary features.  ironically the GRS position in the winjupos planetary surface texture is way off.  

GRS longitude (Sy. 2)
JUPOS database

in the image above and my 11/12/2023 06:45.8 UTC image, i measured the GRS longitude at 46 in winjupos.  sky safari lists it at 50, accounting for the difference in the image and planetarium software.  

references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter

On the rotation of Jupiter
R. Hide
Geophysical Journal International, Volume 64, Issue 1, January 1981, Pages 283–289, 
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-246X.1981.tb02668.x

https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/interactive-sky-watching-tools/transit-times-of-jupiters-great-red-spot/

historical trends and recent observations JUPOS.org:
http://jupos.privat.t-online.de/

imaging details:
eastbluff, CA
11/22/23 05:22 UTC

CM1 60.8, CM2 59.9, CM3 102.6

celestron 11" Edge HD

baader IR/UV block filter
ZWO ADC

ZWO ASI 290MC (one shot color camera)
11x90 second captures 05:15-05:30 UTC
FPS (avg.)=27-110
Shutter=5.545ms
Gain=351 (58%)
Histogramm=85%
downsampled to 66 % :(
software:
firecapture
autostakkert
winjupos
registax
photoshop