Hi guys,

For the first time in years I was able to capture a planet over 4
consecutive evenings!
This allowed me a complete mapping of Venus because of its 4 days high
clouds spinning period.

On April 19th I captured venusian clouds among terrestrial clouds which
did let me have a thin minute of clear sky only. Seeing was fairly good
nonetheless, hence my frustration.

On April 20 and 21 I had clear sky but poor seeing.

On April 22nd I decided to move my telescope over a beach (!) to prevent
convective heat from the ground. Venus was well placed over the
relatively cool sea surface (18°) and I could enjoy a breathtaking image
at the eyepiece!
The 2 bright cusps were easy and prominent without any filter and I
could grab my best Venus shot ever.
Need an house in front of the sea…

Hi all,

On April 9th I spent the whole day in the Appennines at 1300 meters
altitude and the night up there did bring to me a very nice sky with
excellent transparency and decent seeing.

This is my best Saturn image so far along this [beeeeep] 2007
apparition, the great sky darkness delivered a nice C ring and vivid
colors for a change. The vertical oriented image let me better enjoy
with the Saturn belts system. Is this happening with you, too?

2000 out of 4700 frames (at 26 fps) stacked with any CMY filter in
binning 2x mode. Unbinned streams weren’t as good as the only binned one
I recorded, so there’s still room enough to get better results.
Still hope to say hallo to Saturn in a better way then.

Thank you for your attention.

Hi all,

After a too much long dry spell, I could get my first planetary images
of the 2007 during the last Easter period.

Venus was grabbed on the dusk when the Sun was close to the horizon and
I used the Baader U filter with an additional IR blocking filter to
safely prevent any IR leakage.
Fortunately, I could use a fast exposure because of the complete lack of
AR coated glasses to be crossed by the UV radiation.
On the other side, the scope wasn’t collimated at all in both the 2
sessions because no star was visible before of imaging Venus and I also
had to bring it on my car slowly running on destroied mountain roads!
In fact, both the 2 images were grabbed in the northern Appennines at
1300 (Apr. 9th) and 1500 (April 7th) meter altitude were the
transparency was excellent and the seeing sometime was also nice.

Venus here is showing some dark equatorial streak and bright cloud belts
at mid to high latitudes:

The Venus show has just started…

Il giorno di Pasquetta trascorso nel meraviglioso Parco dell’Orecchiela
si è concluso con questa ripresa di Saturno che, pur non eccezionale, è
pur sempre la mia migliore di questa [beeeeeeep] apparizione.

La trasparenza eccezionale e un seeing quantomeno decente mi hanno
permesso di riprendere al meglio l’anello C e i colori delle varie
bande, per me meglio visibili nell’immagine verticale. Succede così
anche a voi?

2000 frames su 4700 (a 26 fps) sommati per ciascun canale CMY in binning
2×2. Il seeing non mi ha permesso di avere migliori risultati in
modalità unbinned a piena risoluzione, quindi ci sarebbe ancora un certo
margine prima di dare l’addio definitivo al Gigante degli Anelli.
Speriamo.