Beautiful Evening

Mars and Saturn

After more than three rainy cloudy weeks weather finally cleared on June 8th. The evening sky was cloudless. Winds died down. Humidity was low and temperature mild. Overhead a thin crescent Moon, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn were on display from west to east. I couldn't ask for better conditions for some planetary imaging. 

Unfortunately, my laptop chose this night to malfunction. Everything worked normally just hours before, but, for some incomprehensible reason, the keyboard and touchpad were unresponsive when I started the computer. More than an hour of prime observing time was wasted searching for solutions to the problem. This keyboard problem happened once before. I foolishly failed to record the solution I found at that time. So I had to once again wade through a jungle of irrelevant tips on Google before chancing upon the right fix. The keyboard malfunction happens sometimes after updates are installed. I think some updates fail to complete, and there's no warning this has happened. I had to disable the "fast startup" option (hidden under several menu items), then restart. Eventually, the keyboard came back to life, but by then the Moon had set and Jupiter was low in the sky.

I began imaging bright Mars at 11:50 pm with a newly acquired 4X Barlow lens. Then I switched to a 3X Barlow lens. The best results are below. The first image was made with the 4X Barlow. The second image was made with the 3X Barlow. Which do you think is better?

Both images show the same Martian features, although the bright white south polar hood on the bottom seems more visible in the second 3X image. North is up and the polar axis is tilted to the right. A very tiny north polar cap is barely visible as a slight brightening on the 3X image but not on the 4X image. The dark boot-like feature in the north is Mare Acidalium. One thing is certain: these processed images show much more detail than my naked eye could perceive in the eyepiece!

I moved on to Saturn next. Once again, the 4X image is first below, 3X image second.

The north polar region of Saturn is on top casting a bit of shadow on the rings behind. The outer gray A ring and bright white inner B ring are separated by the dark Cassini Division. This time, the 4X image seems slightly better to me because the Encke Gap is barely visible on the left and right sides of the A ring. The Saturn images came out fairly well considering how low Saturn was in the sky.

Near midnight I removed the camera, put in an eyepiece, and did a bit of visual observing. Temperature had dropped rapidly into the mid 50's in the dry, clear air. After looking at some globular clusters, open clusters, and double stars, I got chilled and felt exhausted, so, reluctantly, I had to give up. I would have done more visual observing if I hadn't spent more than an hour earlier solving computer problems!