Uranus - Featuring Satellites

[Macavity]

Thought I'd slip a bit of Video Astronomy in here. But imaging Uranus and

"retinue" has long been on my mind, so Full-Moon notwithstanding... 

The image is stack of 100x1.28s (64x stacked!) Watec 102N+ frames

(Give or take the odd factor of two? lol) But effectively 4min real time!

Dark Subs, some adjustment of "Levels" and a bit o' wavelet tweaking.

Naturally such things remain dubious without a Star Map? But the blobs

seem to correlate rather (surprisingly!) well with Stellarium predictions.

Of course, an 8" / F4 Newt (f/800!) is hardly the ideal "planetary scope".

But I am encouraged to give my (Barlowed?) MAK150 a go sometime.

[rwilkey]

WOW Chris, that is brilliant, well done!

[Pete Presland]

very impressive work Chris!

[james_screech]

Nice image, well done.

[simmo39]

V nice.

[Macavity]

Thanks for the enthusiasm folks! I'm sure the inner satellites lurk beneath Uranus's glow.

Quite how to get to them is less clear. I can still get "several factors" in exposure time

via the Watec. A Barlowed 8" (f/8) Newt? LP filters? My 6" (f/12) Mak150 maybe? 

Still a little time left before Uranus disappears behind next door's hedge...

Until I get a pukka "planetary cam" (one day) this is quite fun... 

[David Smith]

Always impressive to see such distant objects captured by amateur scopes / kit. Well done

[Qualia]

That's a lovely image, Chris. Thank you

[Helen]

Thanks for this Chris.  I've just taken a shot and thought I had caught some moons but didn't know if it was possible.  You've shown it is, so made me hopeful that I've got them too.  I'm using a standard CCD and a 123mm scope though.  Going to try some different exposure times to see whether it is possible to tease out any more moons or some colour/detail on the disk (not really holding out any hope for this though!!!)

Helen