John's Astro Pictures

Planetary Imaging

I am using two instruments - a 16 inch Meade Lightbridge for planets that's been completely rebuilt and has new optics from Royce; and a SolarMax 60mm from Coronado for solar observing. An adaptation to the wavelength tuner means I can make RGB frames from the core and wings of Hα.

And lately I've also been using my old Tasco 4.25" reflector with a new ZWO ASI585MC colour camera.

Good seeing for Saturn in the 16" on Sep 29, 2025:

Titan shadow transit, July 18, 2025:

Lunar eclipse of March 14, 2025:

Three and a half hours with Mars Jan 21 2025

Jan 13, 2025 - Occultation of Mars (reappearance):

Action at Jupiter Jan 2 2025
A couple of hours Nov 24-25 2024

Jupiter - Oct 8, 2011
AR1283 and prominences (movie) - Sep 3, 2011

Jupiter (movie) - Dec 12 2011 and 'Unrolled':

Mars (movie) - Mar 21, 2012
Prominences (movie) - April 13, 2012

New Optics

Saturn - May 20, 2012
Mars - May 20, 2012

Transit of Venus - June 5, 2012

Venus passed over a faint prominence, so it was silhouetted during ingress:

A Movie of the ingress - note the "Arc of Venus".
A montage of the ingress images shows the Arc and Black Drop effect:

Another Movie showing Solar disk details.

Class X1.4 flare in AR1520 - July 12, 2012

The dynamism of the Sun is only barely perceptible to human senses, but a movie running at 1440x normal speed shows clearly how active it really is:

(8Mb)

Using a bandpass tuner on the Solarmax it is possible to create colour frames by combining images taken in the wings (+/- 0.5 Ang) and core of Halpha (the core is in the green channel). This movie was cut short by clouds, but gives an idea.

Class M3 flare in AR1818 - Aug 17, 2013

This movie is constructed from frames taken every 3 minutes over 4 hours Aug 17 showing AR1818 and AR1817 and a large prominence. Partway through a class M flare erupted abruptly. The strong straw colour of the flare debris suggests that material is moving rapidly away from the surface (strong absorption in the blue wing, displayed in the blue channel, and some in the core, shown in green) as the magnetic loop snaps upward, while other material is falling (blue colour).

(4.4Mb)

Sunspot AR1899 is the largest spot I have seen in years:

Some good seeing allowed a nice mosaic of Copernicus. Note the domes to the west, north of Hortensius.

Craterlets on the floor of Plato:

Some good seeing for Jupiter:

An interesting large spot, finally, in August 2015. This is a movie of 2 hours of activity:

Transit of Mercury - May 9 2016.
Ingress was seen visually, but imaging was limited to later when the Sun cleared horizon obstructions. Poor seeing and cloud also interfered, but some images were obtained:

Some activity among some small sunspots:

An animation of the latter half of the transit, with some frames missing due clouds and poor seeing. The 'shadow' to the left and below of Mercury is a processing artefact, and there is an alignment drift as Mercury approaches the limb due to very poor seeing.

The solar eclipse of Aug 21, 2017: there was fortunately an interesting sunspot complex:

that the moon later passed over: