Solar System Today — amateur astrophotography of planets, moons and asteroids

The Solar System is now within reach to amateur astronomers and astrophotographers.

A new revolutionary technique developed while attempting to capture volcanic eruptions on the Jovian moon Io and Saturn moon Enceladus enabled us to replicate it successfully and visualize the majority of moons surrounding the gas giants and dwarf planets, as well as the challenging inner planets Mercury and Venus and also Mars & Satellites.

Named HMIR for Hidden Micro Image Retrieval, this new approach at shooting and processing astro images works by choosing just one single frame among dozens of short exposures taken with a color CCD camera attached to a 16-inch telescope.

The chosen image is then treated and processed using three programs. Paramount to this breakthrough technique is the use of an algorithm present in the image processing softwares available today, which, done in little installments, slowly magnifies the object until its ultimate appearance is finally achieved. Even invisible objects such as the asteroid belt as well as individual asteroids are now in plain view thanks to this new image processing technique called HMIR.

COMING SOON: DEEP SKY OBJECTS

SST ventured beyond the Solar System to pinpoint and visualize up close, objects that are a challenge to any astrophotographer.

Among these are: the Hourglass Nebula, the Red Rectangle Nebula, the Homunculus in the Eta Carinae Nebula, the Red Square Nebula, among others…