A black hole on Neptune?

You'd think it would be on uranus, but there's a black hole on neptune: the Great Dark Spot is thought to be related to a storm, similar to the persistent great red spot on jupiter. there's also occasional cloud activity on the surface of neptune.  both are extremely difficult to detect as it's quite distant.  

Here's a shot of neptune on the same night i shot uranus, using the same processing techniques.  
Definitely a bit of a stretch, but with a little imagination you can see a subtle dark section in the center and a white patch just below and to the right:

Neptune 10/27/2018 06:17 UTC IR-RGB

also seen to the lower right is neptune's moon triton.  

I'd say the white patch is more convincing, but can't call either more than wishful thinking/artifact at this point.  If nothing else, it's a nice shade of blue ;)



Imaging details:
camera ZWO ASI 290MM with ZWO RGB filters
Baader IR pass 685 nm
celestron 11" Edge HD
East Bluff, CA
10/27/18 06:17 UTC
120 second captures, 2x each filter (3 for IR)
gain 456 , exposure ~51 ms red, 19 ms green, 23 ms blue, 100 ms IR 685 <30% histogram
upsampled x2 in autostakkert, derotated in winjupos.
color balance on triton
composite image to bring in triton (present even on short exposures, but faint)

clouds on uranus

what better follow up to methane on jupiter than clouds on uranus? 

prior blog entry: "there's not much to see visually.  bluish-green, it can be seen with the unaided eye in dark locations.  At high power it can be seen as a small disk rather than a dot.  A monster telescope or camera might detect several moons, and possibly faint cloud formations..."

to my surprise, an IR filter was able to bring out cloud cover on the upper half:

Uranus IR-RGB 10/27/2018 08:52 UTC

have to try a methane filter on this one ;)



Imaging details:
camera ZWO ASI 290MM with ZWO RGB filters
Baader IR pass 685 nm, Astronomik IR pass 807 nm
celestron 11" Edge HD
East Bluff, CA
10/27/18 8:52 UTC
120 second captures, 2x each filter (only one for IR 685)
gain 456 , exposure ~13 ms red, 4 ms green, 6 ms blue, 130 ms IR 807 30% histogram
upsampled x2 in autostakkert, derotated in winjupos.
color balance eyeballed ;)
(actually set the white point to the clouds)


here's the straight RGB for the purists:

Uranus RGB 10/27/2018 08:52 UTC

References:
interesting articles by Christophe Pellier on the spectrum of uranus and implications for IR filters:
https://www.planetary-astronomy-and-imaging.com/en/uranus-spectrum-commented
https://www.planetary-astronomy-and-imaging.com/en/filters-uranus-spectroscopy

mercury transit 11/11/2019

managed to catch the tail end of the mercury transit through clearing clouds and fog.  fortunately, the sun is at solar minimum, so there was nothing on the face to upstage the tiny dot. The images were shot with dedicated solar a hydrogen alpha telescope.

Animation (thru passing clouds)

A different perspective

Ha composite

Activity lower right

Image details
Ha full disk Lunt 60 PT single stacked
zwo ASI 174MM
FPS (avg.)=81
Shutter=1.978ms
Gain=50 (12%)
East Bluff, CA
11/11/2019
17:36-18:04 UTC

witch's broom and the veil

  here's the witch's broom nebula:

and the ghoul:

both are part of the veil supernova complex

haunting tale:
7,000 years ago, a massive star burned out, collapsed, and then exploded, creating a supernova.
several thousand years later, prehistoric man looked up in the sky and saw a bright light visible during the day
that lasted for weeks. 
(this was about the time the monolith arrived)

200 years ago, with the aid of the telescope, man discovered
the expanding cloud of gas created by the supernova.
it is very large (3 degrees, or 36x bigger than the full moon) and very faint.
the witch's broom (above) is one edge of the expanding cloud
the other side is shown below at a smaller scale
you can almost see a bow wave ahead of it:


here's the whole thing (click for full size):

Veil nebula

this is a 4 panel mosaic with a total of 32 hours of exposure time
taken over the course of 2 months

~700,000 years from now the expanding shock wave will hit our planet
what will happen to life was we know it?

the bright side (from NASA):
"Although only about one star per century in our Galaxy will end its life in this spectacular way, these explosions are responsible for making all chemical elements heavier than iron, as well as being the main producers of oxygen in the universe. Elements such as copper, mercury, gold, and lead are forged in these violent events. The expanding shells of supernova remnants mix with other clouds in the Milky Way and become the raw material for new generations of stars and planets. The chemical elements that constitute Earth, and indeed those of which we ourselves are made, were formed deep inside ancient stars and distributed by supernova explosions in nebulae like the one we see here".

P.S. recent data indicates heavy elements being formed by neutron star mergers in addition to super novae (confirmed spectroscopically) , something new under the sun. 

On that note:
happy halloween