Jupiter
March 13, 2004 — Pittsford, NY
Jupiter amidst a shadow transit. 3 moons visible: Europa in the 1 o'clock position, Io in the 7 o'clock position, and Ganymede the light dot on the planet's surface just under the 12 o'clock position. The dark dot on the planet's surface is a shadow being cast by Ganymede.
Labelled version; Aggressively processed version.

Stack of 25 1/4-second images. Canon D60. LX200, eyepiece projection with 12.4mm eyepiece.

Saturn
March 13, 2004 — Pittsford, NY

Saturn near the zenith. This photo was taken directly over my neighbor's house, with heat pouring from the roof and destabilizing the air. Still you can make out the Casini division (the narrow separation visible in the rings).

Stack of 7 1/5-second images. Canon D60. LX200, eyepiece projection with 12.4mm eyepiece.

Jupiter
My first-ever astrophoto!!

When I got my Meade LX200 telescope, I had an Olympus C3000 digital camera. While it wasn't well-suited for astrophotography, I wanted to test it out anyway. So I set up my scope on the roof in January 2002, and slapped the camera on the scope.

The result is a very blurry, poorly contrasted image of Jupiter. But at least it looks like Jupiter, and because of this single photo, I got the bug!

Jupiter - 5 images stacked
Using Adobe Photoshop (the image-editing package I had at the time), I stacked (added together) the data from 5 images of Jupiter taken at the same time. While the first Jupiter image above is just one image, this version adds 4 more shots to that single exposure, enhancing detail.

View a slide-show tutorial on how I stacked and processed this image. (Note: My workflow is much different now, and includes the excellent software ImagesPlus).