Neptune  9-29-03

Neptune is the last of the 4 large gas planets. It is a long long way out there, nearly as far as Pluto. It is so far out that occasionally when Pluto is at it's nearest to the sun, Neptune becomes the furthest out or 9th planet of our solar system. Neptune is visible with a medium sized telescope but beyond the average binoculars. Neptune's largest moon Triton is larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto, and can be seen here too. This picture is a composite. In order to see Triton I had to use maximum exposure and ISO, but that left Neptune badly overexposed. A second set of pictures were taken at a lower ISO and exposure in order to get a picture of Neptune without being overexposed. The 2 sets of photos were then combined to give this composite.

8" F10 Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope, 40mm eyepiece, Canon G2, 3x
6 photos at 15 sec ISO 400, 8 photos at 10 sec  ISO 200
Each set averaged together, then overexposed Neptune was removed from the first set, and then the 2 sets of photos were combined.