A Jovian Superfecta

Earlier this month I was hoping to get in another imaging session for the current Jupiter apparition, with the planet still standing relatively high as the May twilight deepened. I started in “White Light” (color) and quickly saw that the Great Red Spot (GRS) was rising and so I’d have it well positioned. The seeing however, was definitely sub-par, probably a 3 (maybe a 2?) out of 10.

Yet even under this mediocre seeing, it occurred to me that this was an opportunity to try for a wavelength superfecta, capturing the planet and its iconic storm in four different lights: WL, Infrared (IR), Methane (CH4) (UV), and Ultraviolet. It was a little challenging due to the low transmission I get in the CH4 and UV bands, causing the frames-per-second to drop dramatically. In such situations I leverage 2×2 binning, which groups four pixels into one. That makes the target effectively brighter, boosting the signal through this very dark filter. But it also reduces the image scale, so Jupiter appears slightly smaller and less detailed than in my unbinned captures.

The result was an interesting mosaic showcasing how Jupiter presents a different and scientifically valuable appearance in these varying bands of light. Each wavelength highlights a different altitude, particle size, or scattering process in the Jovian atmosphere. The GRS, being a deep, long‑lived anticyclone with complex vertical structure, becomes a perfect case study.

White Light

White light is the “baseline Jupiter”, the view closest to what the eye sees. It is a blend of scattering from cloud tops and deeper layers. The GRS’s color comes from chromophores (complex molecules produced by photochemistry) concentrated in its upper haze.

• The GRS appears as a salmon‑colored oval embedded in the South Equatorial Belt.
• Contrast is moderate because white light integrates photons from many atmospheric layers.

Ultraviolet (UV)

UV images emphasize high‑altitude hazes and aerosols. UV absorption is dominated by photochemical hazes. The GRS has a thick, vertically extended haze cap that blocks UV, making it stand out as a dark feature.

• The GRS typically appears dark in UV because its upper haze absorbs strongly at short wavelengths.
• Surrounding high-altitude haze regions appear bright.
• The UV view often looks “sharper” because it isolates the uppermost layers.

Infrared

Near‑IR wavelengths penetrate deeper into the cloud deck. IR brightness correlates with cloud-top altitude and temperature. The GRS’s anticyclonic upwelling lifts ammonia clouds to higher, colder levels, making it a strong IR reflector.

• The GRS often appears bright in IR because its cloud tops are higher and colder than surrounding regions.
• Belts and zones invert their contrast relative to visible light.
• Even though seeing is often steadier in IR, on this particular night it was not a huge help with poor conditions.

Methane Band

The methane absorption band is the most altitude‑selective of the four. Methane imaging isolates the highest cloud layers, with low-altitude features vanishing almost completely. The GRS’s brightness confirms its vertical extent and the strong upwelling at its center.

• Bright areas in CH₄ indicate very high-altitude clouds that reflect sunlight before it can be absorbed by methane.
• The GRS is usually bright in methane band because its cloud tops extend high into the upper troposphere.
• If you look closely you can also make out tiny NN-LRS-1 near the same longitude of the GRS but in the Northern Polar Region of the planet.

The GRS changes appearance because each wavelength samples a different combination of scattering, absorption, and cloud height. The storm’s vertical structure is complex: a tall central canopy, deep roots, and a surrounding turbulent wake. Multi‑wavelength imaging is one of the few ways amateurs can probe that structure directly.

If you’ve never tried imaging Jupiter beyond one-shot color, you may want to consider expanding your armamentarium to include some additional filters. I’d start off with an IR as it is the easiest and also has the advantage of being a mild antidote to poor seeing. Later on adding a simple UV or methane filter can expand your imaging opportunities of the planet and provide additional valuable scientific information. Jupiter rewards curiosity – and it rewards imagers who look at it in more than one light.

The Beauty of M35

Winter’s sky offers no shortage of showpieces, and for me Messier 35, the bright open cluster resting at the foot of Castor in Gemini, is one of those that I have to check in on. M35 has long been one of my favorite winter targets. It’s easy to find, bright enough to pop even from suburban skies, and rich enough to reward everything from binocular sweeps to deep imaging sessions.

Through binoculars or a small telescope, the cluster spills across the field as a loose spray of mostly white stars, though attentive observers will notice a few with a soft yellowish tint. It is an easy star hop at the base of the constellation, from 3^rd magnitude m and h out to Gem 1 (Propus). Once there our target is only a degree to the north. If you have dark skies (or a large enough scope) you are in for a double treat as just southwest of M35 lies the much fainter and more compact NGC 2158. Under suburban skies it often hides in the background glow, but from darker locations it resolves into a tiny, grainy knot resembling a globular cluster. This side-kick is a distant, older cluster five times farther away than M35 itself. I still remember the first time I caught it from a friend’s property in western Maryland’s dark countryside. Ever since, it’s been a personal benchmark for a dark sky.

This year, with Jupiter entering Gemini, I had hoped for a reprise of one of my favorite celestial pairings. M35 sits only a couple of degrees north of the ecliptic, and when Jupiter wanders through the constellation the giant planet can glide surprisingly close to the cluster. One such moment came in the spring of 1990, when Jupiter passed less than a degree south of M35 – a striking sight in a low‑power eyepiece of my 6” RV-6, creating a memory that stays with you for decades.

With a clear and not bitterly-cold January night unfolding, and with my HEM27 mount freshly repaired, I decided to test the repair as well as my plate-solving technique by targeting M35. After a quick polar alignment, I asked NINA to plate‑solve for M35 and – to my great delight – it did so flawlessly, undoubtably saving me time. As the first 15 second frame came in using the ASI2600MC I could make out not only M35 but that NCG 2158 was well within the frame. I kicked off a capture loop and checked in every 15 minutes or so to ensure things were still moving smoothly.

I ended up capturing 325 frames at 15 seconds each, and after tossing the outliers, 284 made it into the final integration. Processing the data in PixInsight was its own adventure. I leaned on Copilot for guidance, with mixed results – some guidance was helpful, others sent me wandering down dead ends or into outdated interface paths. But persistence paid off. After working through using the Weighted Batch Pre-processing (WBPP) script I ended up with a final image that I’m genuinely pleased with. The slight variety of colors in bright and showy M35 are seen and little NGC 2158 is fainter and yellower, reflecting its age and distance.

M35 never disappoints. Whether you’re sweeping with binoculars, hunting for NGC 2158 from a dark site, or capturing hundreds of frames through a modern imaging setup, it’s a reminder of how much beauty sits quietly in the winter sky, waiting for us to look up.

Test Driving the Seestar S50

For a while now I’ve had mixed feelings about the new generation of “smart telescopes.” On one hand, they make astrophotography astonishingly easy - almost too easy. On the other, they lack that soulful connection you get when you lean into an eyepiece and let ancient photons fall directly onto your retina. I’ve written about this tension before.

So when the Howard Astronomical League set up a Seestar S50 loaner program, I finally got around to signing up. Curiosity won out. I wanted to see whether this little automated wonder would feel like a shortcut or a revelation.

Unpacking the Little Robot

The club keeps the Seestar neatly packed in a compact carrying case, along with a sturdy tripod that’s a major upgrade from the tiny one ZWO ships with the unit. They also included a micro–leveler, a excellent addition that makes fine-tuning the setup much easier and helps ensure accurate tracking and plate solving.

Before my first night out, I watched a few tutorial videos and ran through the pre-flight checklist: compass calibration, app installation, all the usual rituals of modern astronomy.

Field Test: Suburbia vs. 10-Second Exposures

All my testing happened in my Towson backyard, which sits squarely in Bortle 8 territory. If the Seestar could perform here, it likely could perform anywhere. I spent some time scouting the darkest corners of the yard, trying to dodge the neighbor’s floodlight on one side and a porchlight on the other.

My first clear night came on November 23rd in the form of a crisp, 40° temps under clear skies, well suited for a trial run.

The app interface took a little getting used to. At first I kept losing track of how to return to the live stacking view, but after a few minutes the layout started to make sense. Once leveled, the Seestar slewed to my first target: M1, the Crab Nebula.

And then the magic happened.

Within a couple of 10-second exposures, a ghostly patch appeared on the screen — unmistakably the Crab. The Seestar had nailed the target on the first try. I left it running while I went inside to warm up and watch TV. When I returned before bed, it had quietly accumulated more than 90 minutes of data. The live-stacked image already showed color and the classic filamentary tendrils. A bit of elementary post-processing the next day produced a genuinely respectable image.

Not bad for a telescope the size of a thermos.

Chasing the Pleiades

Another target I absolutely wanted to test was M45, to see whether the Seestar could pull out the delicate blue reflection nebulosity around the cluster. I used the “extended field” mode, which stitches slightly offset frames to widen the field of view – a clever trick for large objects.

It worked far better than I expected. After 75 minutes, the Merope Nebula was clearly visible, and the whole frame had that soft, ethereal glow that makes the Pleiades so arresting in appearance. A little post-processing turned it into another keeper.

A Productive Two Months

Over roughly eight weeks, I captured:

• M1 (Crab Nebula)
• M38
• The Owl Cluster
• M42
• NGC 1055
• NGC 2403

Each target reinforced the same impression: the Seestar is remarkably capable for its size and price.

Where the Seestar Stumbles

As much as I enjoyed using it, the experience wasn’t flawless.

• Forced firmware updates: One night I had to wait for an update with no option to defer. At a dark-sky site, that would be maddening.
• Wi-Fi frustrations: Despite tutorials and configuring the required low-bandwidth network, I never managed to get the Seestar to connect through my home Wi-Fi. Being able to run it from the comfort of my bedroom would have been amazing.
• Occasional boot hiccups: A few times the unit simply wouldn’t connect to the iPad until I restarted it.
• Wind sensitivity: Even with the sturdy tripod, a mildly breezy night caused enough buffeting that the Seestar rejected a large fraction of frames, causing me to abandon the imaging run.
• Limited focal length: At 250mm, it excels at wide-field star clusters and large, bright nebulae, but for targeting the multitude of planetary nebulae or quirky galaxies (some of the object I love most) there just isn’t enough magnification there to get the job done.

Verdict: A Keeper (Just Not My Keeper… Yet)

The Seestar S50 won me over. It won’t replace my Vixen and ASI2600 for deep, detailed imaging, but it’s a delightful, capable, and genuinely fun piece of gear. The ability to set it up, walk away, and come back to a finished stack is liberating. I can easily imagine running a Seestar in the backyard on a DSO while I’m out front lucky-imaging a planet.

If ZWO ever releases a version with a longer focal length – or the ability to insert something like a 2× Barlow – I’d be seriously tempted. For now, I’ll happily borrow the HAL unit again this summer and see what else this little robot can do.

A Regal Conjunction

On September 19, 2025, a rare celestial event unfolded in the pre-dawn skies over Maryland: the conjunction of the Moon, Venus, and Regulus. I had high anticipation for this conjunction for several reasons. First, the tight grouping of the three celestial bodies was remarkable. Venus, the waning crescent Moon, and Regulus (Leo the Lion’s lucida) were packed within a 1-degree field of view. This meant that they were close enough to fit under a fingertip held at arm’s length, or easily with my telephoto lens racked out to 300mm.

So often the word “rare” is thrown about with abandon in regard to astronomical events. But this one does merit the appellation. A similarly tight grouping won’t occur again until September 22, 2041, when the trio will fit within a 7.2° circle. My research could not find any evidence of another triple conjunction from Maryland that will fit within a 1.0° field of view for at least the next 50 years.

Preparation

A few days out, the weather forecast looked very favorable for the morning of September 19^th, so I set about planning for it. I jumped on the Heavens-Above website and used their interactive sky chart and twilight times to get a preview. Those tools let me know that the event would be low on my eastern horizon, which was a problem due to the trees and houses that blocked my eastern view from home.

I needed a better venue and thought that somewhere along the nearby Loch Raven Reservoir might offer a clearer eastern horizon. I ruled out any trails as it could be risky navigating an unfamiliar path in the dark while carrying my camera equipment. Exploring virtually with Google maps, I noticed several small “observation decks” along the eastern side of the Dulaney Valley road bridge that crosses the reservoir. By midweek I had a game plan: park my car off on the shoulder near the bridge and walk a quarter mile to the platform.

The day before the conjunction, I weighed doing a reconnaissance of the bridge, anticipating that I would swing by right after work around 3:30 p.m. However, fate had other plans. Around 10 a.m., I received news that I was being laid off as part of budget cuts and had to hand in my laptop by 2 p.m. Given that 2026 was going to be my last year of part-time work as an OCR software developer, the layoff was not a significant impact, although there was the emotional aspect of no longer being employed after over half a century of work. The immediate upside was that it gave me an early departure time to head out to the reservoir. My drive out to the bridge validated my plans to park the car just before the bridge and walk out to the first fishing platform.

The Conjunction

I set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. Thursday evening, but I was up before the alarm went off. I dressed quickly and hustled out the door with my camera. I was at the pull-off area south of the bridge within a few minutes, parking the car and gathering my equipment. As I used my cell phone’s torch to light the path out to the platform, I pushed away the slight anxiety that creeps in, that sense of caution mixed with danger when doing something like this.

As I rounded the corner and stepped onto the bridge I saw my prize: an ocher-colored Moon rising, with Venus hanging just below it, both attenuated by the atmosphere. Regulus was not visible at that point, either hiding behind the trees or extinguished by the horizon haze. I was a bit surprised to see the Moon was in front of me rather than to my right over the water. As I advanced towards the bridge, the tree line slowly loomed taller and taller. By the time I was at the platform, the Moon and Venus were just skirting the treetops on the opposite shore. While not the imagined view of Moon rising over the waters of the reservoir, the setting was certainly beautiful.

The Crescent Moon & Venus

I set up the camera and bracketed a few shots of the slender orange crescent juxtaposed with a cream-colored Venus dangling below it. Time passed quickly, and as the duo climbed out of the haze, I could soon see Regulus hanging below Venus, forming a remarkable straight line. The earthshine was now evident, adding to the sublime nature of the appulse. For the next 45 minutes, I captured images at various focal lengths and exposures. Even at the full 300mm of the telephoto lens, all three members of the conjunction were in the frame due to the tightness of the conjunction. I knew the more challenging aspect in replicating with the camera what my eyes were witnessing would be the brightness contrast of these three. Venus outshone Regulus by about 100 times, while the Moon was just 5–6% illuminated, creating a dramatic visual contrast that our logarithmic eyes can handle well but pixels struggle to faithfully reproduce. Some things are just seemingly made for naked eye observation.

Moon, Venus, Regulus (and earthshine)

I had to contend with the southbound traffic coming from Jarrettsville Pike, timing my shots to miss their oncoming headlights intruding into my frame, even with the lens hood attached. I also noted that at times when some vehicles passed by on the bridge, there was some vibration, which likely ruined some shots. After about an hour and with dawn beginning to lighten the horizon, I packed up the camera and began the trip back home.

Conjunction reflected in the water below

As I pulled up in front of my house around 6:20 a.m., I assessed where the Moon was. It was still hidden behind trees, so I walked around to the backyard, camera and tripod in hand. It was not until I moved to the farthest southwest corner of the yard that the trio of conjunction companions cleared the rooftops. I fired off a couple of shots as the eastern sky gradually grew brighter, concluding my engagement with this magnificent conjunction by about 6:30 a.m.

The conjunction from my backyard

Witnessing this triple conjunction of the Moon, Venus, and Regulus was absolutely an unforgettable experience. The planning, the anticipation, and the sheer beauty of the event made it a night to remember, and the images will serve as a wonderful reminder of that September morning out at Loch Raven as the heavens aligned.

Full Frame Focus

We're getting close now to the big event - the April 8th Total Solar Eclipse! And as the days fly by I'm trying to finalize my strategy for getting some memorable shots while balancing my desire to also "be in the moment" during the 4+ minutes that are going to whip by in time-warp fashion.

For the 2017 eclipse I used our "family" camera - a Canon t6i - attached to my Vixen 600mm refractor. That particular model has an APC (or cropped) sensor, which has the effect of increasing the focal length. Per Fred Espenak ("Mr. Eclipse"), a cropped sensor will increase the size of the Sun in your photo by about 50%. And while I was blessed to get some very nice shots using it at the 2017 eclipse, I felt that I wanted to have a bit more space around the Sun to better capture the full extent of the corona. While the 300mm telephoto lens on the t6i would certainly do that (and worked well for the Albuquerque Annular eclipse), I like the sharp optics and higher focal length of the Vixen.

And so began my research into getting a "full frame" camera body. There are basically two options now - a standard DSLR that has a flip-mirror in the optical path, or a "mirrorless" design where the sensor feeds directly to the screen on the camera rather than looking through a view finder. The latter is still fairly expensive (IMO anyway) at over $1,300 for a decent quality unit. 

But with users switching over to the mirrorless format, I reasoned that their old cameras might be popping up on eBay. After an afternoon of evaluating the offerings I found a Canon 5D Mark II camera body for $350. Sold!

A few days later the camera arrived. The body cosmetically looked acceptable, so the next step was to charge the battery to verify it turns on and works. That test passed, but then the challenges of getting it eclipse-ready started. The first disconnect was the SD card I ordered did not fit - these older units take a much larger UDMA card. Fortunately I could find one with adequate capacity and good transfer rate.

With the camera charged and outfitted with a card I turned my attention to hooking it up to the Vixen to see if I could get some Sun pictures. While my existing T-ring that I use to hook up my Canon t6i fit the Mark II, I immediately realized that since it was a 1¼ inch design I was shooting myself in the foot by not having a 2" T-ring. A little internet searching turned up a great company, Telescope Adapters, that had just what I needed. A couple days later I had my adapter and was ready to target first Solar light for the full frame camera. On the 9th of this month that took place, and I was pretty impressed with the wider field.

The final hurdle was to integrate the camera with laptop software to automatically take a sequence of shots during the eclipse. In 2017 I had tried Eclipse Orchestrator but did not feel confident enough to let it run the session, and ended up manually taking shots via the Canon app on my tablet. That definitely impacted my ability to "be in the moment" for the eclipse (but it was still a riveting, surreal experience!) Additional research turned up the Solar Eclipse Timer and Camera Controller (SETnC) application. This seems a little simpler and hopefully will prove to instill greater confidence in turning the camera control over to it.

Last weekend I set the Vixen up again and played with the SETnC taking exposures. While setting up an exposure sequence and executing it went well, I did find that the best rate for snapping off shots is roughly 1 per second, even with the premium UDMA card. That is a bit of a disappointment as I was hoping to be able to click off at least 2 shots per second to provide some bracketing during the C2 and C3 events  (e.g., trying to capture Bailey's Beads or Diamond Ring). Given the age of the camera it is really not a surprise, but at this point I think I am going to let fate dictate the outcome and hope for some great souvenirs of my last Total Solar Eclipse. After all, luck is always a factor in any such endeavor (just ask someone who's been clouded out for their celestial event!)

Image of naked-eye sunspot AR3590
with Mark II and Vixen 80mm

The Dogs' Globular

Tucked under the Big Bear's tail is the tiny constellation of Canes Venatici, Boötes' hunting dogs. For such a small constellation it might be accused of celestial gerrymandering by having its borders claim such deep sky masterpieces as M51 (Whirlpool galaxy) from Ursa Major and M3 from the herdsman. 

Messier 3 is a wonderful globular boasting half a million suns packed into its perimeter. Even from Towson you can sweep up this dandy DSO as a fuzzy 6th magnitude star roughly midway between Arcturus and Cor Caroli (the α star of Canes Venatici). My 6" RV-6 Newtonian at medium magnification and averted vision shows a brighter core and some of the members of the cluster winking in and out with averted vision. The 10" Cyrus reflector exposes many more suns and begins to hint at the true majesty of this object. 

When planets aren't around for imaging I will give the deep sky a go. In this regard I'm not very hard core, using my  unmodified Canon EOS t6i rather than a dedicated unit, and I have not invested in things such as a field flattener that the more serious imager might do. I also do not currently have a guide camera, relying on a good polar alignment and shorter ~30 second shots to keep stars from trailing. I use a simple illuminated tracing pad to serve as light source for my flats. I have invested in a copy of PixInsight for processing, and will probably be plumbing the depths of its functionality for years to come. So when at the end of April we had a pleasant evening, a little chilly but with pretty good transparency, I rolled the mount out of the garage, attached the Vixen, and set off to see if I could get a nice scrapbook photo of the globular.

One of the things that I wanted to try out was my recently purchased Baader Moon & Skyglow filter to see if it could cut down on the nasty light pollution in my stacked image that I so often encounter when doing deep sky. The company claims "it darkens the spectral region which is particularly marked by street lamp light, which is the biggest contributor to the nightly Skyglow". The second thing I was interested to evaluate was BackyardEOS, a software package that allows you to automate a sequence of exposures taken with the camera. In the past I had turned on the camera's built in Wi-Fi and used the Canon app on my tablet to take the exposures. But that gets tedious fairly quickly, firing off an exposure every 20-30 seconds. 

The time spent on polar alignment was worth it as the scope dutiful slewed over to Arcturus for a quick focus check with the Bahtinov mask in place. From there we slid up to M3 and began the session shortly after the passing of astronomical twilight. The BackyardEOS performed quite well as I set up a series of 30 second exposures over 15 minutes. At the end of each run I would check that the globular was positioned near center and that no star trailing was evident. After 6 such runs I then set about acquiring the dark and flat exposures.

Of course, collecting the data is only half the game. The stack in Deep Sky Stacker looked pretty good when I did an auto-stretch in PixInsight. The light pollution detritus was much reduced, so high marks for the Baader filter doing its job fending off the neighbors' lights. This time, in my search for a good PixInsight workflow, I followed along with a YouTube video made by Richard Bloch. It was one of the best I've watched so far, easy to follow along and enough rationale provided for why you are taking certain steps. It ended up helping me produce a pretty nice image of this cluster of suns that was the first faux comet entry that Messier himself is thought to have observed. 

It is always satisfying to see your work improve, and I was happy to find that my small investment in the two new tools did help me in my desire to occasionally snatch a deep sky portrait from the driveway of my home.

64° N

Among the items on my bucket list is to see the northern lights, a fairly rare event from Maryland’s latitude. The last significant event around here was in the fall of 2001, but I was sadly unaware that it was happening. I still remember my disappointment the next morning when my boss exclaimed “Wow, did you see that sky last night!?”

With COVID vaccines making it reasonable to travel again I began thinking where my wife and I might go to perhaps witness the aurora. One logical approach was to investigate a tour with that objective such as those offered by Sky & Telescope. They were conducting a trip to Iceland in the fall of 2021 and the itinerary looked very nice – if you’re big into astronomy. My wife has a natural curiosity about the night sky but is hardly an aficionado of the heavens, so planning our own expedition where we could explore items of interest and possibly catch a northern lights display in the evening seemed ideal.

At 64° N in latitude the island nation of Iceland is certainly far north enough to regularly witness auroral displays. A little research also uncovered that October was not simply a random month selected by the official tour, but being near the equinox it has a better chance of seeing a display. It basically has to do with the favorable presentation of the magnetic field lines in interacting with the solar wind as discussed in the October 2021 issue of S&T.

We arrived quite early on the morning of October 4^th and were greeted by a taste of Icelandic weather – a very blustery, rainy, and cold dawn, quite a rude change from our departure the prior evening with temps in mid-seventies. We made our way to the Northern Lights Inn where we would be staying for the week and grabbed a quick nap. That afternoon we explored the capital city of Reykjavik, roughly 25 miles away.

That first evening the skies were partly cloudy with roughly 50% of the sky being obscured at any one time. The wind in Iceland is seemingly perpetual and vigorous, so it was not exactly pleasant to step outside for any length of time. Being some 24 degrees more northerly in latitude I was immediately struck by the height of the Big Dipper which was near its anti-culmination point due north. From Towson it is so low to the horizon I lose sight of it, but here it was skimming above the rooftop with ease. Polaris had ascended noticeably higher and, while it was only midnight, Jupiter was already drawing close to the horizon in the southeast. I had anticipated in this little coastal town of Grindavik that the skies would be quite dark, and while the Milky Way was plainly visible it was not nearly as robust as I was expecting. I scanned the northern skies for any signs of the ethereal emerald glow without success, so I turned in with hopes that we’d get an aurora wake-up call from the inn keeper.

The next day we toured the "Golden Circle" and visited some spectacular scenery. Þingvellir National Park showcases the mid-Atlantic rift where the American and European plates meet (one of the few places where it lies above sea level). There was also the majestic Gullfoss water falls - we only wish we had more time to linger there.

On the ride back to the inn I was checking weather and aurora potential for the evening. The skies were predicted to be partly cloudy with (as usual) brisk winds, the KP index was around 3, a slight potential for auroral activity. A little before midnight I went out with camera in hand in search of Northern lights. It was mostly clear with the light dome from Reykjavik visible in the northeast. While scanning the skies I also decided to take some 20 second constellation shots, which was challenging because of the wind buffeting the camera on its tripod. After about 30 minutes I decided to go inside and hope for an aurora wake-up call (which never came).

The next day I was reviewing the constellation shots when I was startled to see the characteristic green glow beneath the Big Dipper. It turns out that while I wasn't successful visually capturing the Northern lights I had managed to record it photographically. Retrospectively, it obviously makes sense that over a 20 second interval the CMOS chip could record the glow when it was too faint for my eyes.

 

The Northern Lights under Ursa Major

The remaining 2 evenings in Iceland were overcast so there was no additional opportunity to catch the lights. And, of course, the following week I saw reports of some fantastic aurora lighting up Icelandic skies - timing is everything. Our trip was truly memorable - surreal and beautiful nature, superb seafood, and welcoming people. I guess I'll put an asterisk next to that bucket list item of seeing the Aurora Borealis in that while I did not see them, I did manage to photograph them. 😊

Why Bother?

What is it that causes someone to undertake astronomy as a hobby? I certainly believe that one of the primary drivers is the majesty of the night sky - especially when unencumbered by light pollution. It is a visceral awe that arises from your soul when you behold a sky that is ablaze with stars. 

Milky Way over Blackwater Wildlife Refuge - by Cheryl Kerr

Another incentive is the invitation to ponder the fantastic. We learn of things such as suns collapsed down to neutrons where a pea-sized portion of it would be measured in tons, and we contemplate storms on other planets lasting centuries.

Yet a third enticement is the thought that one might contribute to that body of knowledge. In bygone decades the discovery of a comet was the goal of many a dedicated amateur observer. Others have fastidiously and relentless made magnitude estimates of variable stars, or timed the central meridian crossing of Jovian features. But then the automatons arrived, tireless robotic scopes and orbiting observatories capable of being the eyes on the universe in a way amateurs cannot match.

The perceived loss of relevance is certainly real. Witness the genuine excitement of our community at the prospect of providing exo-planet transit timings to help scientist improve their knowledge about these distant worlds. I fully expect companies like Celestron to soon begin marketing tools to help those who wish to participate in this work.

Planetary observing has been an astronomical passion since my first “real” telescope that enabled me to see features. I started by sketching Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Venus to submit to the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO). More recently I’ve taken up imaging as it yields results that are far superior to my aging eyes and artistic talent.

After so many years of just being an ALPO member, I decided last year to volunteer as the coordinator who posts images and sketches from observers across the globe to the ALPO gallery. Twice this week, in email exchanges with individuals who contribute their work to the gallery, I encountered the sense of inadequacy. “It is impossible to keep up with the big guns,” was the lament from one. It can be deflating when comparing one's work to the astounding images produced by amateurs equipped with larger scopes, deeper pockets, and a firm dedication to their craft. Indeed, why bother to capture an image when you know there are others whose work is consistently an order of magnitude better than what you can achieve?

First, I’d argue that self-improvement is never a wasted effort! As you become more familiar with the equipment and software your end result will look better and better. This, in turn, is likely to encourage you to buy that next piece of equipment or program that can push your current boundaries of expertise. You may never reproduce the results of someone like Damien Peach, but that is true with any hobby – from needlepoint to swimming there are dedicated “amateurs” who will always be the ones we strive to emulate.

My Mars images from 2018 and 2020

 

Secondly, you’ll never know when it will in fact be you who witnesses a rare event. It happened to Ethan Chappel two years ago as he was carrying out “lucky imaging” of Jupiter when he recorded a momentary bright flash that turned out to be a boulder-sized meteor striking the planet. He was the only person to capture the event which helps scientists to calculate the frequency of such impacts at Jupiter. If it happened to Ethan (and others over the last decade), it could certainly be you the next time.

A final motivation is that your observation is likely unique. The top gun amateurs are not out there 24x7 capturing video of the major planets. Your photo or sketch can be very useful in determining the drift in longitude of a Jovian cloud feature, pinpointing when and where that Martian dust storm originated, or refining a brightness estimate of an inbound comet. Advancing science is often achieved through many data points – be one of them!

 

Yes, the professionals and leading amateurs have the equipment and resources to provide us with stunning planetary images. But that should not be any reason to rule out the citizen scientist role you can play by persistently going out and reporting on what you see to organizations like ALPO. Keep refining your skills and keep looking up – who knows what opportunity for discovery you might encounter?