Astrophotos February 2012

All these photos were taken on one evening, the 19 February. I'm starting to get better at using the equipment and I'm able to take longer shots. I think the main benefit comes from the new software I'm using to take the video and I'm no longer using a virtual machine but a Windows partition (my laptop is a MacBook but the webcam and software is Windows only).

Anyway, enough of this techno-babal here are the photos.

At the time of taking the photos Venus was really bright and you could see it for most of the night. Jupiter was right over head approaching Venus. Mars was making its appearance a lot later on in the evening.

Venus in half phase looking very beautiful. I'm not sure if I've got the brightness correct yet. I know that you can't see any surface detail due to the full coverage of the highly toxic cloud system.

Venus

 
Jupiter, looking different from the shots I've previously taken. This is one of my favourites of Jupiter because you can see a lot of detail. Notice the different angle of the bands compared to previous photos. There also seems to be a tinged of blue and I'm not sure what that is.

Jupiter

This is Mars, the red planet. You really can see the surface detail. You can also that blueish light again! This was taken with the webcam connected to the x2 barlow.

Mars