Uranus with polar hood and 4 moons - 11 Nov 2023

[geoflewis]

After a lot of encouragement by Kostas @Kon,  I'm pleased to share with you my first image of Uranus showing both it's polar hood and surrounded by 4 of it's moons.

This is an IR-RGB image, with the best 5000 frames from a 15m SER captured at 30ms provising all the detail. It's applied as a luminance layer to the best 2000 frames froma a 5m colour SER also captured at 30ms.

As usual for my recent planetary images, this was captured with the ASI462MC camera through my C14 XLT.

Edited November 11, 2023 by geoflewis

[Paul M]

That's really nice. I spotted the rather nice spacing of the moons on SkySafari and thought about setting up just to try and capture them. But this is a working weekend for me, late home, early up in the morning, so a non-starter.

I feel happier now that the alignment wasn't wasted!!

[geoflewis]

Thanks Paul, this was in the early hours of this morning, actually the capture stradelled midnight, with a central timestamp of 00:05am. As you probably saw on Sky Safari, Ariel is now on the other side of Uranus between Oberon and Umbriel. I was going to head out again, but it was cloudy, so I'm enjoying a glass of red wine instead 🍷

[Paul M]

35 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

As you probably saw on Sky Safari, Ariel is now on the other side of Uranus between Oberon and Umbriel

Last night and tonight turned out to be spectacularly clear, though last night wasn't forecast to last. So I've been watching Uranus and it's moons on SkySafari for a few days.... drooling. And in the back of my mind is a vague idea of making a short animation showing, hopefully, some orbital motion over, maybe 6 hours or so. Right now is the window of maximum accessibility from my back yard.

I don't have the gear or skill to make any realistic attempt on the disc, but I do have some experience of stacking on over exposed planets to reveal their satellites

Sadly, this evening the flesh was weak and the clock was way ahead of me.

[geoflewis]

6 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Last night and tonight turned out to be spectacularly clear, though last night wasn't forecast to last. So I've been watching Uranus and it's moons on SkySafari for a few days.... drooling. And in the back of my mind is a vague idea of making a short animation showing, hopefully, some orbital motion over, maybe 6 hours or so. Right now is the window of maximum accessibility from my back yard.

I don't have the gear or skill to make any realistic attempt on the disc, but I do have some experience of stacking on over exposed planets to reveal their satellites

Sadly, this evening the flesh was weak and the clock was way ahead of me.

I hope that you do it, would be great to see it 👌

[orion25]

Great work, Geof! I'm happy just to see the little blue-green disc in my scope. I've actually taken some cool shots of Uranus with my DSLR when it was in conjunction with other planets, but, of course, no detail could be seen. I could get a hint of its color though.

[Pete Presland]

Superb capture Geof, great to see the Polar hood and moons. Was this at the Native FL ?

[Kon]

Excellent image. Your Uranus IR alone that you have shown me is one of the best out there with the polar hood really distinct.

Your next aim under good seeing are the rings. 😉

[tomato]

I’m not much of a planetary imager but I think I can recognise a great image of Uranus when I see one.👍

[geoflewis]

7 hours ago, orion25 said:

Great work, Geof! I'm happy just to see the little blue-green disc in my scope. I've actually taken some cool shots of Uranus with my DSLR when it was in conjunction with other planets, but, of course, no detail could be seen. I could get a hint of its color though.

Thanks Reggie,

The only previous time I've captured Uranus's moons was with a DSLR camera back in 2014. https://www.astrobin.com/136156/

As the capture notes show that was using DSO capture techniques of nearly 3/4 hour in 3m exposures. Of course Uranus itself was completely overexposed and saturated white.

[geoflewis]

3 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Superb capture Geof, great to see the Polar hood and moons. Was this at the Native FL ?

Thanks Pete, effectively yes, almost native FL, but I do still have the ADC in train (mainly because I've got everythinf dialled in as is), so the rig is operating at between F12-F13 rather than the C14's native F11 (which with a moving mirror for focus is never really F11 anyway).

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, Kon said:

Excellent image. Your Uranus IR alone that you have shown me is one of the best out there with the polar hood really distinct.

Your next aim under good seeing are the rings. 😉

Thanks Kostas,

I only got this far because of you excellent guidance, thank you. I did keep stretching the IR image to see if any hint of the rings was there, but nothing. I really have no clue what I'd need to do to capture them, is it longer duration SER, faster or slower capture speed, different gain, etc., etc.

[neiil phillips]

Excellent Geoff similar to what i got years ago. With a 12" Newtonian. Some banding Showing quite clearly

[geoflewis]

14 minutes ago, neiil phillips said:

Excellent Geoff similar to what i got years ago. With a 12" Newtonian. Some banding Showing quite clearly

Thanks Neil,

As Kostas commented, it was very clearly seen in the IR image, so here is a crop to show it.

 

[orion25]

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Reggie,

The only previous time I've captured Uranus's moons was with a DSLR camera back in 2014. https://www.astrobin.com/136156/

As the capture notes show that was using DSO capture techniques of nearly 3/4 hour in 3m exposures. Of course Uranus itself was completely overexposed and saturated white.

Wow, that is a great shot!

[Kon]

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Kostas,

I only got this far because of you excellent guidance, thank you. I did keep stretching the IR image to see if any hint of the rings was there, but nothing. I really have no clue what I'd need to do to capture them, is it longer duration SER, faster or slower capture speed, different gain, etc., etc.

I will message you regarding the rings. But more data are necessary. Unless you can see Miranda, the rings will be even harder.

[geoflewis]

22 minutes ago, Kon said:

I will message you regarding the rings. But more data are necessary. Unless you can see Miranda, the rings will be even harder.

So what if I just stack a higher % from that 15m SER?

[Kon]

Just now, geoflewis said:

So what if I just stack a higher % from that 15m SER?

The more data you can add the better. You can check against this https://pds-rings.seti.org/tools/viewer3_ura.shtml

and align your image to see if you have got them. But Miranda needs and should be visible in your C14.

[Space Cowboy]

Terrific capture Geof! You are certainly producing the goods at the moment! 👍

[geoflewis]

14 minutes ago, Kon said:

You can check against this https://pds-rings.seti.org/tools/viewer3_ura.shtml

Thanks Kostas, what a great tool, thanks for sharing it.

[geoflewis]

3 minutes ago, Space Cowboy said:

Terrific capture Geof! You are certainly producing the goods at the moment! 👍

Thanks Stuart, the skies and atmosphere have certainly been kind to me recently.

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, Kon said:

The more data you can add the better. You can check against this https://pds-rings.seti.org/tools/viewer3_ura.shtml

and align your image to see if you have got them. But Miranda needs and should be visible in your C14.

So I stacked 20k frames from the 30k available, so 66% and applied a huge curves stretch in Affinity Photo - what do you think....?

 

I don't see anything when I apply curves to the raw 20k stack, so I'm wondering whether the ring is just an artefact from the wavelets applied in Registax, especially given the dark ring between Uranus and the potential rings.... 🤔🤷‍♂️

Edited November 12, 2023 by geoflewis

[Kon]

30 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

So I stacked 20k frames from the 30k available, so 66% and applied a huge curves stretch in Affinity Photo - what do you think....?

 

 

I don't see anything when I apply curves to the raw 20k stack, so I'm wondering whether the ring is just an artefact from the wavelets applied in Registax, especially given the dark ring between Uranus and the potential rings.... 🤔🤷‍♂️

You probably have a hint of Miranda. These rings are maybe light diffraction. Best thing is to put the info of the capture on the link I posted above and superimpose it on your image and see where the rings align.

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, Kon said:

You probably have a hint of Miranda. These rings are maybe light diffraction. Best thing is to put the info of the capture on the link I posted above and superimpose it on your image and see where the rings align.

I did an overlay and then used the Game recorder to record me changing opacity to show how well what might be Uranus's rings align with the graphic. It looks pretty close to me. Also looks like there's a pixel of noise which just might be Miranda....

 

 

[Kon]

4 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

I did an overlay and then used the Game recorder to record me changing opacity to show how well what might be Uranus's rings align with the graphic. It looks pretty close to me. Also looks like there's a pixel of noise which just might be Miranda....

 

 

I think you may well have it! The moons have excellent signal and sharp and you don't seem to have to have to stretch too hard.