Moon Mars Occultation

Mars is about to move behind the Moon during a recent occultation shot through obscuring atmospheric ionic conditions, and resurrected via multiple core gradient level image processing. Note the various unexpected albedo levels from the planet and the aura produced by the Moon disk perimeter, likely due to limb variations in brightness and scattering in the atmosphere.

Moon Mars Occultation

Heavily processed and amplified Moon Mars occultation image shot through heavy random upper ionic atmospheric pollution. Shooting through a blanket layer of total sky obscuration is an art within itself. Subtracting off light pollution and balancing a view through ionic obscura requires numerous software packages programmed to resurrect the latent digital image. Background sky is a contentious variable dealt with by using multiple iterations of software processing.

Mount Calibrating Solar System Objects

Celestron Goto Mounts - Align without Stars!
Mount Calibrating Solar System Objects

Quick-Align uses all the date and time information entered at startup to align the telescope, However, instead of slewing to the alignment stars for centering and alignment, the telescope bypasses this step and simply models the sky based on the information given. This will allow you to roughly slew to the coordinates of bright objects like the Moon and planets and provides the telescope with information needed to track objects in any part of the sky (depending on accuracy of polar alignment). Quick-Align is not meant to be used to accurately locate small or faint deep-sky objects or to track objects accurately for astroimaging.

To use Quick-Align, simply select Quick Align from the alignment options and press ENTER. The telescope will automatically use the entered date/time parameters to align itself with the sky and display Alignment Successful.

By Decimal
Latitude: (+) 25.0409° N
Latitude: (+) 121.5720° E

By Degree, Minute, Second
Latitude: (+) 25° 02' 5.40" N
Longitude: (+) 121° 34' 3.59" E

Time Zone
Time zone in Xinyi District, Taipei City (GMT+8) Greenwich Mean Time
or UTC +8, Coordinated Universal Time
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2022/03/celestron-nexstar-6-se-planet-tracking.html

SOLAR SYSTEM ALIGN WITH NESTAR 6SE
Solar System Align is designed to provide excellent tracking and GoTo performance by using solar system objects (the Sun, Moon and planets) to align the telescope with the sky. Solar System Align is a great way to align your telescope for daytime viewing and a quick way to align the telescope for basic nighttime observing.

To perform a Solar System Align
1 - Once the telescope is powered on, use the SCROLL UP and SCROLL DOWN buttons to select Solar System. Align Press ENTER

The hand control will display the last time and location information that was entered into the hand control. Press ENTER to accept the current information or press BACK to manually edit the information (see SkyAlign section on page 10 for detailed instruction on entering time/site information).

2 - The SELECT OBJECT message will appear in the top row of the display. Use the SCROLL UP and SCROLL DOWN buttons to choose a Solar System object (a planet, the Moon, etc ) to use for alignment. Press ENTER

3 - The hand control will then prompt you to use the direction arrow buttons to slew the telescope to the alignment object and carefully center it in the finderscope. Press ENTER when centered.

4 - Then, center the object in the eyepiece. Press ALIGN

Once in position, the NexStar SE will model the sky based on this information and display “Align Successful”

Celestron Nexstar 6 SE Planet Tracking

https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2022/03/celestron-nexstar-6-se-planet-tracking.html

Signing of Otis Astroimaging with Space1

Signing of Otis Astroimaging with Space1
As of Wednesday, May 18, 2022, under the auspices of Otis Astroimaging (consisting of a conglomerate of 19 space observatories and dozens of Otis United Technology Laboratories) has signed an agreement with SPACE1 to handle the new flight schedules pertaining to the Solar System, deep space development and beyond.

System schedules include Solar as supported by Sun Baked Observatory, the Moon as supported by Singularity Observatory, Mars as supported by the Mars Observatory Initiative, and deep space by the Deep Space Network. Space1 is interested in extreme high tech inventions by Mike Otis through Otis Astroimaging many of which are classified.

Space1 & the Dynamonic Electrodynamic Stargate Explorer

Each year, the mode of space exploration was evolved and upgraded with new science, technology and invention. Space1 is proud to have carried the development of the safety rocket for eight years, now culminating with the epitome of an incredible vehicle for space exploration - the Dynamonic, which took part in the Lunar Extravaganza Dynasty (SPACE1's Pacific Lunar Extravaganza Dynasty is founded by Humanoido to support upcoming lunar bases, colonization of the Moon and continued exploration of the new world.)

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2021/08/dynamonic-propulsive-invention.html

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2021/08/dynamonic-test-run-to-moon.html

The Dynamonic is now renamed to the Dynamonic Electrodynamic Stargate Explorer.

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2021/11/space1-dynamonic-stargate-explorer.html

Small Telescope Fun

Having Fun with Small Telescopes
Not every image taken with a small telescope will reveal detail like the Hubble Space Telescope but you can do the next best thing by processing your photos in new, unique, and artistically creative ways. Left: original image. Below: Enhanced

Take for example this original image of the Moon (at top), captured with a small plastic telescope at 4-inch aperture. At first glance, there's not much useful information visible and the photo is overall dark and gloomy, but what if we could have some fun and extract more data from our favorite crater Ptolemaeus?

The crater Lyot is barely shown but what if image processing could enhance it and show more, introducing shadow depressions and more detail inside the giant crater? And to boot, let's add some pizazz with creativing lighting and color flares to make it interesting and fun. The second image shows those results. A lot of detail appears inside Ptolemaeus and the entire terminator is more pronounced with new features visible. Lyot crater is clearly visible along with more terminator details. To process the image, I first used Apple Mac OS system software Photos to base enhance the image. A second program Photoscape X was used for refinement and special effects, light flares, color, enhancements and framing.

CAPTURE THE ENTIRE MOON

At left is the original gibbous Moon image taken with the same telescope. The image is small and lacks the clarity of lunar features. In the next image, the Moon is having a bout of processing with Photoscape X to increase image scale and bring out the clarity of features.

So next time out, get creative and have a ton of fun with your small telescope!

Moon Image Shows Potential Base Site

Moon Image Shows Potential Base Site
The bright spot marks the potential lunar base site for a lunar landing mission by SPACE1 and Humanoido. Full Moon image captured with a C14 Edge-HD, CGX-L, iPhone camera and color processing.

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-case-for-moon-colony.html

Moon & Venus

Crescent Moon & Gibbous Venus

Monday morning, September 14, 2020 , Apple iPhone XS Max camera 4.25mm f1.8 2858x3812 790K, HEIF, ISO 2500 1/4 sec. exposure, 4:28 am, rising over Taipei Taiwan. Below: enlargement showing the phases, Moon's Earthshine, and the phase of planet Venus. Need to check other photos to identify star occultation.

Light Pollution

Light Pollution Friday Sept. 4, 2020

Photos of light pollution in the Taipei area after midnight on Friday September 4 2020 using NightCap camera and the iPhone. A mix of lights in the early morning hours continue to light up the sky demanding drastic measures for telescope imaging. Using the same smartphone camera and app, the sky was imaged to show the Moon and Mars. The image was processed to subtract light pollution and remove noise using Apple Photos and PhotoScape X.

Nightcap Experiment

NightCap Moon & Jupiter
Experimenting with Nightcap - the gibbous Moon and Jupiter on the night of Saturday, August 29, 2020 shot with a handheld Apple iPhone and the app NightCap. Some additional process was applied with free PhotoScape X including luminance and color noise reduction and the film effect plus merging with Apple Paintbrush.

At left, a screenshot of NightCap, showing these settings on the iPhone. Note, NightCap has additional settings. For the Moon and Jupiter, the ISO was boosted high, JPG was high quality, noise was reduced, and the exposure was cut to one second.