Jupiter and Uranus in Conjunction AND Opposition AND .8 degrees apart Planetary Grouping at Sundown 9/17/10

Uploaded 9/19/10

 This stunning pairing all in one night! And while our seeing here in Payson is never good, the wide field of the pair marks the first time I had ever recorded both objects in one frame. Visually, Jupiter had a single belt and the great red spot was just coming onto the disk. Also, a jet black moon shadow is on this planet. Uranus is very dim photographically. So dim, I had to use long 1/10 second exposures just to see it at all on the CCD. It is very tiny, about twice the size in angular extent of Jupiters moon Ganymede. A tough target indeed!
Here we can see brilliant Jupiter on the lower right and the bright "star" on the upper left is Uranus. Look carefully at the diffraction spikes and they are green.
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Prime focus shot with the 8" f/4. To the left is Io, right is Europa, and Ganymede is transiting the disk. You can see on the upper disk, the belt is still missing.
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With the 5x barlow things are a bit unsteady, but here you can see Ganymede just to the left of its shadow on the upper disk. I also shot Uranus at the same magnification and placed it next to Jupiter here for Illustration purposes to show the size and color difference. Note that Uranus is about twice the size of Ganymede. I recorded with the DMK CCD and a set of SBIG interference color filters for the RGB data.
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Optics: 8" f/4 Newtonian Astrograph w/Baader MPCC Coma Corrector OR with Televue 5x Powermate Barlow Platform: Astrophysics AP1200 Camera: DMK CCD at 1024 x 768 Exposure: 1/10 - 1/64 Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 5/10, Transparency 9/10 Outside Temperature: 60F Processing Tools: Photoshop CS2, Images Plus 3.82 HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS