First Light: Vesta Pro

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"First Light" with the Vesta Pro. Even though most of the planets were very low on the horizon and the seeing was extremely bad (imagine photographing the moon reflected in a swimming pool with a bunch of kids in it), I had to take the opportunity to try my new webcam. I didn't have much time to play around with the first 4 planets since they were on their way down (notice the light refraction due to the atmosphere: blue on top, red on bottom), but I am pleased with the Jupiter shot. Make sure you look at the composite shot I made that includes three of Jupiter's moons (Io, Europa, and Ganymede). Also, Since this was taken during the great 2002 Planetary Convergence, I took some wide angle pictures with my digital camera. See them here.

Taken with a Philips Vesta Pro 690K webcam. I unscrewed the lens and mounted it to half of a plastic 35mm film canister so that it would fit into a 1.25" eyepiece socket. The telescope used was a Meade LX-90 (8" SCT, f/10). Pictures were captured and stacked using K3CCDTools or Registax. Further processing done with Paint Shop Pro 7