# 179 | Jupiter
With opposition occurring on April 3rd, Jupiter can currently be found low in the east shortly after sunset. By 11:00 p.m. Jupiter has risen high enough in the sky to be free of the atmospheric turbulence that will affect discerning fine planetary details while planets are low on the horizon.
This image, taken by Brian Colville of Cambray, Ontario, shows the Great Red Spot, a storm the size of the Earth, and a number of white ovals trailing after it. While the Great Red Spot can be glimpsed with smaller telescopes, an 6" or larger telescope accompanied by a night of good seeing conditions is needed to see the ovals.
Brian used a Meade 12" SCT and a webcam with colour filters to take his image of Jupiter on March 27, 2005.
# 178 | NGC 2903
Somehow overlooked by Messier when he was compiling his catalogue, NGC 2903, a barred spiral galaxy approximately 25 million light-years away which can be found near the top star of the sickle in Leo, shines at magnitude 9.7 and can be seen in scopes as small as 4" from a dark site.
Albert Saikaley took this image of NGC 2903 from his backyard observatory in Ottawa, Ontario using a Celestron C-11 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope operating a f6.3 and an SBIG ST-10XME self-guided CCD camera (LRGB=70:19:18:22.5 minutes).
# 177 | Mercury and the Moon
Mid-March presented us the best opportunity to view Mercury during 2005. The highlight of the two-week window of viewing Mercury occured when the crescent Moon slipped by over the course of March 11-13th.
On March 12th in Warminster,Ontario, the clouds cleared just long enough so that Brian Mould could snap this picture, a one-second exposure using a Minolta X-700 camera with a 75-200mm lens (used at 150mm and f7) loaded with Fuji Superia 800 speed print film.
# 176 | Orion's Nebulas
With our winter constellations soon disappearing, there won't be many more opportunities to view the Orion Nebula, also known as M42, before it sinks into the sunset. To the unaided eye, the middle star of Orion's sword looks unremarkable. Seen as a small cloud-like patch when viewed through binoculars, a telescope can show complex nebulosity with wispy gasses reaching outwards.
Although the entire nebula is commonly referred to as M42, five catalogued nebulas can be seen in this image. M42 (largest nebula, centre and right), M43 (small, very centre), NGC 1977 (right-side portion of the blue nebula on the left), NGC 1973 and NGC 1975 (both on the left side of the blue nebula)
From his home in St-Liboire, Québec, Martin Bernier recently took this image using a 10" Meade LX200 (at f4) and a Canon 300D digital camera. Three 7-minute exposures at 400 ISO were stacked and combined with 5,10 and 100-second images (to show core details).
# 175 | Spendid Saturn
Planetary imagers are making use of clear nights and Saturn's position high in the night sky soon after dark to submit some incredibly detailed images of the ringed planet. From his backyard observatory in Kitchener, Ontario, on March 4, 2005, Darryl Archer used a Celestron C14 and a Philips webcam equipped with an IR filter to take 3000 frames of Saturn. Afterwards, 800 frames were processed using K3CCD Tools, Registack 3.0 and Photoshop. Tethys, one of Saturn's moons, can be seen near the bottom.
# 174 | Alberta Aurora
Edmonton, Alberta is known as one of the world's premier aurora observing locations. Auroral displays often suddenly develop and then disappear as quickly as they came, much to the delight of amateur astronomers viewing through their telescopes. For those that enjoy photographing auroras, they don't occur often enough!
On March 4, 2005, Peter Boytang of Edmonton, Alberta noticed an aurora quickly forming and took a number of images with his Canon 20D digital camera. For this image, Peter took a15-second exposure at ISO 400 with a 50mm lens set to f2.5.
# 173 | The Horsehead Nebula
Difficult to see without dark skies, a large telescope and a specialized filter, the Horsehead Nebula reveals itself rather easily when imaging. However, because of its small size, it becomes a challenge to record a sharp image that shows intricate details.
Rémi Lacasse took this superb image from his observatory near Mont-Tremblant, Quebec on February 11, 2005. Using a 14" Ritchey-Chretien telescope mounted on a Paramount ME mount and his CCD camera, Rémi collected 120 minutes of Ha data and combined it with 50 minutes of data taken in red, green and blue.
# 172 | Saturn
There aren't many objects in the night sky that illicit responses of disbelief from someone when viewing through a telescope for the first time. Chances are that if you've shown Saturn to someone who has never seen it before, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. With Saturn visible soon after dark, now is the perfect time to be introducing Saturn to those who haven't had the pleasure of viewing it before.
With a Quickcam Pro 3000 webcam, on February 5, 2004, Claude Boivin of Saint Félicien, Quebec used an 11" Celestron SCT operating at f25 to take 3 minutes of .avi images (at 5 images/second) and afterwards stacked the data using Iris and Registax 3.
# 171 | The Rosette Nebula
The Rosette Nebula, an emission nebula in the constellation Monoceros. Although the surface brightness of the nebula is low, it can be seen under moderately dark skies with binoculars. Within the centre of the nebula are some open star clusters, with the brightest being NGC 2244.
From his suburban backyard in Waterloo, Ontario, Brady Johnson took this composite image (six 5-minute images) using a Canon 300D digital camera, a Borg 76 ED refractor equipped with a Hutech light pollution supression filter, a Sky Watcher EQ6 Sky Scan mount and an SBIG ST237A autoguider. Image processing was done using Images Plus and Photoshop.
# 170 | M81
Those that have not seen galaxies M81 and M82 will soon have a chance. As spring approaches, their position in the sky rises higher each evening. M81 and M82 combine to make a splendid sight in medium -sized or larger telescopes. See POW 167 for a recent image of M82 and POW 108 for an image showing both galaxies.
From Ottawa, Ontario, Albert Saikaley, using a Celestron C11 telescope, a Losmandy G-11 equatorial mount and an SBIG ST-10-XME CCD camera, combined image data taken on January 31, 2005 with some from last year with the result being this detailed shot of M81.