{"id":1714,"date":"2016-09-05T15:11:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T13:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.planetary-astronomy-and-imaging.com\/?p=1714"},"modified":"2018-09-26T21:53:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T19:53:02","slug":"mission-pic-august-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetary-astronomy-and-imaging.com\/en\/mission-pic-august-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Second mission at the 1 meter telescope of the Pic du Midi"},"content":{"rendered":"

From August 6th to 9th, 2016, I went back to the Pic du Midi Observatory for a second planetary mission with the 1 meter telescope. It has been a great success especially with Neptune storms imaging!<\/em><\/strong>
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For this new mission, we were three with Marc Delcroix and Jean-Philippe Cazard (the editor of our future book Planetary Astronomy<\/a><\/strong>). The main target was imaging Uranus and Neptune storms. A smaller part of the mission has been dedicated to Saturn and Mars that were visible shortly after sunset.<\/p>\n

Uranus and Neptune are currently two favoured objects for advanced planetary observers, because their observation offers a real opportunity of producing a work of\u00a0scientific value. Storms on Uranus are numerous, but very small most of the time and today not within amateur reach. From time to time however, a bigger thunderstorm can appear (last time in 2014), it’s then accessible by photography with telescopes from around 300 mm (12″). Although Neptune’s apparent size is only two third that of Uranus, it paradoxically presents a more intense\u00a0and more accessible storm activity (possibly with only 250 mm (10″)! ). Successful infrared images systematically show brighter zones at least in its southern hemisphere (which is actually in its early ~40 terrestrial years summer) – please read this older article on the blog: Neptune, the new amateur boundary<\/a>? However bright spots can be caught at other latitudes and from this point of view the Pic results are spectacular!<\/p>\n

Neptune results<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

(click on all images below for full resolution)<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were blessed with excellent conditions, especially during the night from 7 to 8 August. The 1 meter telescope is so impressive that most of the storms were visible directly on the screen during raw recordings! Imaging is mostly done in near infrared with the Baader IR 685. These images have been processed by Marc.<\/p>\n\n\t\t