Hi all,

Find here my first two images of the old and fat Jupiter which is no
longer able to climb high in the sky as happened on the last years!

Both the 2 images were grabbed with the planet below 25 degrees of altitude!
So far, I never grabbed a planet so low above the horizon!
And the seeing wasn’t that good even at high altitudes…

Hopeless situation here…

Hi all,

On May 22nd I could have a nice view of the Saturn occultation despite high clouds were persistent overhead since 2 days and cleared out just 2 hours before of the event!
Seeing poor as always and fairly good transparency.
A red filter was used with my usual equipment.

Timing:

1st contact: h. 19:32:59 UT
2nd contact: h. 19:33:55 UT
Elapsed time: 54 seconds.
http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/images/saturn/ingressus_divx.avi
(464 kb, DivX format)

3rd contact: h. 20:38:33 UT
4th contact: h. 20:39:52 UT
Elapsed time: 79 seconds.
http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/images/saturn/egressus_divx.avi
(2.76 Mb, DivX format)

Max error within +/- 0.5 seconds due to the poor seeing.

Geographical Coords:

LAT: 44° 02′ 30″
LNG: 10° 06′ 13″
Alt. 40 m.

To follow a still frame sequence.

Hi all,

Here’s my first attempt in using the Baader Ca filter (thanks for the loan!) to detect Venus clouds.
This filter (395nm, just 8nm bandpass) delivered a sharper and steadier live image than any else UV pass filter I used so far!
Same shutter and gain levels as before.
The contrast was a tad lower but this is can be fairly compensated by a larger UM or wavelet.

Notice that bright cloud on the top-left corner which recalls the McNaught comet in a some way!
Seeing was nice, transparency good. The Sun was still nicely high above the horizon when shooting.

Hi all,

On April 22nd I could capture my best ever Venus image. The good spell
of seeing lasted until this lunar image, then it miserably faded away.

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/images/moon/janssen20070422_lazz.jpg

For the first time in months, I used again the G filter. The scope
wasn’t perfectly collimated…

More to follow.

Hi all,

After a 4 months dry spell, on April 21-24 I had a batch of decent
evenings to grab the Moon low above the western horizon.

On April 21 I attended at a local star party, so I wasn’t able to take
several images. This is the only one from that eve. People queued behind
my scope couldn’t wait any longer for looking at Saturn!

Here’s portraied the SE limb under favourable libration including main
craters as Neumaier and Helmhotz (top-right corner), Gill (on middle
top, close to the missing part) and Pontecoulant on the left corner.
The seeing was very variable with nice spells among very poor periods,
transparency quite good.
A severe drift along the DEC axis due to the mounting not aligned to the
pole (the polar star wasn’t yet visible at that time) caused the missing
part and some possible motion blur.

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/images/moon/southeastern20070421_lazz.jpg

Hi all,

Find here a new image of the 2nd most cloudy planet of the Solar System.
Seeing and transparency fair despite the late evening capture.
Clouded out a while after when I was looking at a nice Saturn!