I haven’t done any solar system photography in several years. In particular, Saturn has been a no-go for several years straight. This is a combination of my focus being on DSO photography, Saturn’s rings being in sort of “bummer” mode, and Saturn being not as well-placed in the sky.

But, since I had the rig all set up anyway, I decided to go for it.

Saturn was really not working at f/60. Just not enough light to go. Maybe it’s because it’s low, maybe I just need to shoot at f/40 instead. In any case, this is f/20, 4700mm focal length.

Not a great shot, but Saturn’s back on the website, so there you go.

The Sinus Iridium, or Bay of Rainbows, is a pretty feature that I found by checking it out in the finder.

I had fun trying to ID all the lunar features that I’d shot sort of at random. I found all but one.

Plato is another favorite crater. It’s such a contrast to the surrounding area, and very round and flat.

Apparently, being able to pick up multiple craterlets inside Plato is a test of planetary optics. I don’t think this was the correct lunar phase to really shoot for this; I count 3. I was having a lot of fun picking up photos of stuff on the moon at a scale I’d never really shot before.

After shooting the few large craters that I can identify, I started looking for other interesting craters, assuming I could look them up and ID them online.

This is Grimaldi, which was right on the lunar terminator tonight. It would have fit better with a 90deg rotation of the camera, but I wanted to maintain my orientation so that I didn’t get confused during processing.

North is more or less down in all these photos. shrug

(added 5/26/2011 — I checked the size of those small lumpy features seen on the floor of the crater, and I roughly estimate the largest one to be about 4 miles across, based on the resolution of the image and Grimaldi’s diameter)

Copernicus and Kepler are my two favorite craters on the moon. They actually work a little better when you can see some context, but there you go. Here is Copernicus, a very obvious crater that is visible to the naked eye.

I tried out some high-resolution lunar photography. With the C9.25 and the NexImage (including the ever-present 2x Barlow), I have a FOV of about 2′, so it’s strictly for “craters”, rather than “full disc shots”.

This is a view of the moon that I don’t often get. It was fun to find old favorite craters and see them close up.

This is Aristarchus, the “bright white” crater near Copernicus and Kepler.

I finally have a photo of Mars.
I started doing astronomy right after The Big Mars Opposition of 2003. By the time I had my astrophoto mojo working, Mars was a dim and tiny speck lost in the glare of sunset. So I missed the 2003 opposition.

In 2005, my astronomy life was pretty torn apart; between college and moving to the new house and hadn’t built the observatory yet, I really didn’t get a lot of sky time. So I missed the 2005 opposition, too.

By 2007, I was doing pretty well at DSO photography, and simply never got around to shooting Mars. Scratch the 2007 opposition.

The 2009 opposition was shaping up to be the same; I’ve been watching Mars set later and later and just never got around to taking my shots.

But, with the success of the collimation last weekend, I really wanted to give the C9.25 a try, and since planetary photography is less equipment-intensive than DSO photography, Mars seemed like a great choice.

The seeing was horrid. Cloud banks rolled in constantly for the first hour or so I was out. There was a nearly-full moon just a few degrees away, and I was manually focusing (focus knobs; how quaint). I admit to being a bit rusty at planetary photography, too.

But, a first shot of a new object is something to treasure. So here it is:

This is through the C9.25, stacked 2x and 3x Barlows, with the NexImage. I was running at 5fps (needed as long of an exposure as I could get at f/60), and captured in Craterlets, stacked in Registax 5, tweaked in PS CS.