The disc of Mercury was 61% illuminated when this image was made and was 7" in angular diameter. This observation was made when Mercury was at an elevation of just 23 degrees, even at this favourable eastern elongation. This is one of the main reasons Mercury is so hard to observe and image - it is never far from the Sun and it will never be high in the sky after sunset or before sunrise. In future I would like to attempt some daytime observation/imaging of Mercury.

This was a short imaging session at the end of a period of dry and fairly clear weather - the driest April I can remember. Thickenning bars of cloud rolled in from the west giving a couple of minutes in the gaps to capture images. Seeing was mediocre and getting worse as Venus' elevation got lower and lower. The infrared image was certainly more stable than the white light image on the monitor so the final result was reasonable.

An initial experiment with imaging Venus in ultraviolet light using the Schuler UV pass filter. This filter has a pass band from about 350-400nm in the near-UV. UV images of Venus show cloud details where white light images just show a featureless disk. For this first experiement I was using my ordinary (unmodified) ToUcam which has limited sensitivity at UV wavelengths so the UV image was not very satisfactory. Comparison infrared image is sharper but featureless.

This is a UV image with my new (May 2007) B&W modified ToUcam. C9.25 at f40. Some cloud detail is visible.

A collage showing Venus images at 3 different wavelengths. Quite a bit of atmospheric detail is visible on the UV image.

This montage of UV Venus images shows the changing phase and some of the changing pattern of cloud markings during the western elongation of Venus in summer 2007.

This was the start of my attempted at imaging Mars during the 2005 apparition. The planet's disk was about 18" diameter at this time. I was pleased with the image at the time but I had barely got the hang of webcam imaging back then and much better was to follow as Mars neared opposition.

By this time I was starting to improve a bit in my Mars technique and I had realised how important image scale is. In order to acheive the greatest possible image scale I stacked a 2x and a 4x Barlow giving an f96 optical system with an effective focal length of around 10 metres!

This was one of a series of experiement imaging with the Baader infrared pass filter. This wavlengths of light greater than about 670nm, in the near-IR part of the spectrum. The contrast obtainable with this filter was quite striking although the dim images were just at the limits of what this scope/camera could cope with. I had to have the camera gain on maximum giving quite noisy images.

Mars was getting a lot smaller again at this time but some surface detail could still be discerned, especially in the IR image.

This was possibly my best Jupiter image from this apparition. The Great Red Spot is clearly visible.

First Jupiter image with DMK camera and C9.25 (@f20). This is a stack of about 1000 frames. Note on this near IR (Baader IR pass filter - c700nm) image the GRS appears bright.

900 frames stacked showing 3 of the 4 Gallilean satellites. The field of view did not allow Ganymede to be captured in the same frame at this time.

This was one of my best Saturn images of the 2006 apparition.This was about as far as I could get with the 5" scope in terms of image scaleand resolution. I was quite pleased with the result at the time.

This was one of the first planetary images I got with my C9.25. I was well pleased with the improvement in image scale, resolution and image brightness compared with the little Mak.

Saturn imaged in infrared. C9.25 at f40. This was a first with my B&W modified ToUcam. The CCD is much more sensitive than that in the standard ToUcam, especially at infrared and ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. This was a stack of about 800 frames and used the Astronomik 807 IR filter. Its passband is a bit deeper into the IR than the Baader IR passfilter, giving a peak response in the camera at about 800nm.

Saturn and its brighter moons. The approximate magnitudes of the satellites are shown on the image. To get an picture like this is impossible without taking one image exposed for the planet and another exposed for the moons and combining them (to avoid the planet being overexposed and burnt out). I was pleased to get Mimas (mag 13) but missed Hyperion at approximately mag 14.

In this apparition Saturn's rings are seen more edge-on than last year. This was my first image of Saturn (white light, IR cut filter only) taken with the DMK21 camera.

Just a tiny bluish disk, but it still amazes me that you can see even this at 1.9 billion miles distant.