Ricardo Nunes

Astronomy & Space page

• Home
• Astrophotography
• Solar System Exploration
• Planetary Art

(I'm changing the page layout to this one, so please escuse some problems)

Astrophography

Webcam and CCD with small telescopes from suburban skies. Images of the Moon, Planets and Deep Sky objects, and information about the cameras and techniques used.

Moon: 1, 2, 3	Jupiter: images after 2005, images before 2005
Mercury images	Saturn images
Venus: telescopic images , Venus Transit	Uranus & Neptune images
Mars images	Deepsky ccd images
Cameras, observatory and processing	Misc observations (occultation, eclipses, meteors)

 

Solar System Exploration

Images processed from the original raw data of several planetary exploration missions. "New" views from old data.

Luna 3 - 1959 "Automatic interplanetary station Lunik 3"	Mariner 4 - 1964/68 "Mariner 1964"
Zond 3 - 1965 lunar mission	Pioneer 10 and 11 - 1972/97 "Pioneer Project" (work in progress)
Phobos 2 - 1989 "Mission to Mars and Phobos"	Viking Lander 1 & 2 -1976/80 "Project Viking Mission to Mars
Viking Orbiter (work in progress)	Mariner 10 - 1973/75 "Mission to Mercury and Venus"
Pioneer Venus Orbiter (work in progress)	Mars Global Surveyor 1997/07
Venus Express (work in progress)

 

Planetary Art

Some art featuring a voyage of imagination to the different planets. Eruptions on Io, the martian sky, mountains on Venus...

Besides imaging the planets I'd also like to be able to go there, or at least to take close up pictures of this distant and fascinating worlds. Today, with a simple PC, I can simulate what it would be like to do this things!

As I'm not a 3D graphics expert I took the easy approach: use Celestia to travel to the desired destination and point the camera, all in real time and using the mouse!

To get good results I updated and corrected the textures that came with the program and also changed some atmospheric parameters. This way the images look more natural and the colors more real. I also used Terragen and a old software called VistaPro to make some surface views. All images were then further processed to achieve more realistic results.

I also like to do some further processing on panoramas, create polar views, etc.

Solar systems: mu Arae 55 Cnc ups And Sol

Planets: Venus Mars orbit & Surface Jupiter: Io Europa Ganimedes Callisto

Sources: Textures

About me:

I'm a Portuguese amateur astronomer and I started in 1997 using a 2.4'' altazimutal refractor and a 4.5'' German equatorial reflector. I'm also a member of the Portuguese Amateur Astronomers Association - A.P.A.A.- where I learned about adapting webcams to do astrophotography. I think that these cameras are a very interesting way of entering into CCD imaging for a small price and also to get good results from modest telescopes. Now I'm using conventional CCD .Right now, my imaging setup is based on a Celestron 8'' SCT mounted on a Vixen SuperPolaris mount, a Starlight MX516 CCD with USB interface and a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000.