observations!

My webcam telescope adapter arrived last week, on Thursday night I found some time to give it a go on Jupiter:

With the webcam, the idea is to record video and then process the frames in to a single image, which averages out most of the noise, and for a first attempt I don't think this looks too bad. The colours are off, though, and there's not as much detail as I'd like. I think I had the shutter speed a bit too high, though, so the dynamic range in the images was too small. If I can fix that next time, I'll hopefully get some better results.

I also finally managed to get a glimpse of the ISS in my telescope, as it passed overhead last night. It was an ideal pass, really, but the sky was covered in clouds, and I didn't think I was going to see it at all until I finally spotted a faint white star moving through the clouds. I only got to see it for about 30 seconds before it disappeared in to thick cloud, and it was tricky to track, even at my lowest magnification, but I could still make out a central structure (the station itself) with some extra bits on either side (the solar panels).

I tried to get some pics of it during tonight's pass, but I got set up about a minute too late. If it's clear tomorrow night, and I'm home early enough (it's passing over at about 5:30), I'll have another go then.