Hoegaarden Astronomy & Photography
Not much of a spectacle, but the bright & big asteroid “Vesta” was in opposition last weeks. It’s pretty south, near the Libra border and has a magnitude of 6.4 currently, and fading.
I had some trouble locating the object as the EPOCH between starmaps and telescope were different.
Anyhow: about 30×30″ or 15′ of imaging, C14 with Starizona LF reducer, ASI2600MC, no guiding, light dithering.
Distance: 187 million kilometers, or 10 light minutes. Diameter 468 km.
Already for a few days a high pressure area settled around Belgium, unfortunately with a temperature inversion. In practice that means fog & mist in the lower parts of the country, and only the higher area’s such as the Ardennes hilltops and the “Hautes Fagnes” plateau stick out of the clouds and have sunshine and blue skies.
On Saturday we finally got some blue sky, with the C14 just in time back in business (see previous post).
On Venus, as usual – very little to no detail visible. Probably best to use an UV filter for getting some cloud structure visible.
Jupiter was captured simultaneously by the C14 (Baader IR RGB & ASI290 mono) and the Maksutov ( Player One Neptune).
C14 image of the big giant, with the Red Spot clearly visible.
With the Maksutov, the images were visibly less detailed:
Just as I was pointing the C14 towards Mars, the dew point was reached. In a few moments the whole sky completely closed like a curtain.
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