NOVAC’s Byron Bergert Imaging Group will hold its Pre-Groundhog Day Image Processing Party on Saturday January 31 from 10am to 2pm at the Patrick Henry Library in Vienna. We’ll be in the meeting room, first door on the right as you come in the main door.
This time around we’ll have an addition to our normal routine of talking about imaging and processing our data. I’ll demonstrate how I processed a recent deep sky image, showing how I use Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop to stack the data and process it. To make the most of this, I’ll post the data online (hopefully tonight), so that other imagers can try their hand at processing the data as well. At the get-together on Jan 31, we can look at different ways of processing the same data, and compare results. I’m hoping that one of the PixInsight users in the club will take a crack at this so that we can compare the different workflows. This walkthrough will require a projector! If you can bring one, please let me know.
I hope to see you there.
Kevin Quin
This is the best day of the year to view Jupiter, as it makes it’s closest approach to Earth and will be fully reflecting light from the sun. There will also be plenty of light reflecting off of its four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. These will be visible on both sides of the planet. Even at its closest approach to the Earth, however, it is not possible to distinguish it as more than a star-like point of light with the naked eye, though a good pair of binoculars are sufficient to reveal it as a disk of light with accompanying system of moons.
This is a “Black Moon” because it is the 3rd New Moon in a season of 4. In some aspects of Paganism, particularly amongst Wiccans, the black moon is considered to be a special time when any rituals, spells, or other workings are considered to be more powerful and effective.[
Watch for the closest conjunction of Venus and Mars since 2008. Look just beneath the crescent moon for bright Venus, and use binoculars to resolve Mars within the same field of view!
Or, better yet, plan a trip to Mars where in the morning light you can view a beautiful Earth + Venus conjunction.