Jupiter and 21 frame animation – Brisbane 17th April 2018

[Dennis]

Managed to grab a clear night where the seeing started off around 4-5/10 but then went to 3-4/10 just as the GRS rounded the corner!

This is the 1st frame (00:06 am) with an animation up to around 01:51 am when the seeing fell off a cliff.

Equipment details:

• Takahashi Mewlon 210 F11.5
• TeleVue 2” PowerMate x2.0
• Effective FL=4830mm
• ZWO ASI 120MM-S, SX USB FW
• RGB, 30 secs each. Seeing (Pickering) 4-5/10
• Jupiter Altitude = 68 degrees.

Just before slewing to Jupiter (E of the Meridian), using the same configuration, I looked at the on-screen image of Spica (alt=72 deg, W of the Meridian) and compared it to the “seeing” animations on Damian Peach’s website “The Pickering Scale”:

http://www.damianpeach.com/pickering.htm

Through the Lum filter, Spica’s in-focus appearance looked like the “Pickering 4 rating – Poor” animation.

When I then selected the IR642 Filter, Spica looked more like the “Pickering 5 rating – Fair” animation where I was able to occasionally glimpse partial arcs of the 1st diffraction ring.

Capture Details:
Red

• Frames captured=858
• FPS=28
• Shutter=35.00ms
• Gain=50 (50%)

Green

• Frames captured=858
• FPS=28
• Shutter=35.00ms
• Gain=50 (50%)

Blue

• Frames captured=751
• FPS=25
• Shutter=40.00ms
• Gain=55 (55%)

AutoStakkert!2 was used to Align and Stack 50% of the Frames from each Channel.
Registax6 was used for Wavelets Sharpening.
CCDStack V2 was used to Align/Combine RGB Frames.
PS CC was used to finish off and add text.

Here is a link to the animation on PVOL.

Cheers

Dennis

[astroron (Ron)]

Very Nice Dennis
Cheers

[h0ughy (David)]

wow so beautiful, what an excellent rendition

[batema (Mark)]

That looks fantastic. Well done.

[RickS (Rick)]

Cool stuff, Dennis!

[blinky (Leigh)]

Well done! Especially in average conditions. Big effort pulling all that together

[Troy]

Really good images Dennis and looks like some consistent seeing conditions for the animation.

[Dennis]

Thanks for looking folks, I appreciate your comments.

As Jupiter cleared the trees I took a few test AVIs and noticed Europa popping out from behind the Jovian disc. The 2nd file is an animated GIF of the event.

Much later, I also managed to record the GRS but by this time the seeing had dropped to between 3 and 4 so the detail is somewhat washed out.

I have been very impressed with how these ZWO ASI cameras allow the user to continue capturing planetary images in poor seeing conditions.

Cheers

Dennis

[RickS (Rick)]

Lovely work, Dennis. I'll have to give planetary a go one of these days. Looks like a completely new set of challenges

[Stonius (Markus)]

I love planetary animations! Nice one! :-)

So was that basically 1 frame for every ten minutes interval?

Markus

[Zubenel (Wes)]

Hey Dennis , So I have been watching it all spin in reverse for all these years. It's a Dob's life !!! Nice capture man

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by RickS

Lovely work, Dennis. I'll have to give planetary a go one of these days. Looks like a completely new set of challenges

Thanks Rick – just let me know if/when you would like to have a go and maybe we can arrange a session where I can run through the set up, capture and post processing stuff.

We can always star with an easy target like our Moon, grab a few AVIs and then run through the processing in Autostakkert2! and Registax as a test run.

Its quite different to DSO imaging, but you get to enjoy the results the same night!

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Stonius

I love planetary animations! Nice one! :-)

So was that basically 1 frame for every ten minutes interval?

Markus

Thanks Markus – I used Torsten’s excellent FireCapture camera control application and set up a 30 sec RGB sequence with a delay of 210 secs between each RGB run.

So, effectively, these were 90+210 secs = 300 secs or 5-minute intervals.

SO much more comfortable that sitting there with a watch and manually pressing the record button!

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Zubenel

Hey Dennis , So I have been watching it all spin in reverse for all these years. It's a Dob's life !!! Nice capture man

Thanks Wes – I’m still trying to work out which way is up and have downloaded WinJUPOS to help become better acquainted with planetary orientation protocols.

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb (Marc)]

Missed that one. That is very cool.

[andyc (Andy)]

Very nice indeed Dennis

[Dennis]

Thanks Marc & Andy, I appreciate your comments.

Cheers

Dennis

[beren]

Great work Dennis, glad you got your mewlon out too

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by beren

Great work Dennis, glad you got your mewlon out too

Thanks Stuart, these are such lovely 'scopes and I should really get my finger out and use it more often.

Cheers

Dennis

[astronobob (Bob)]

That is Brilliant, wowo wow, Dennis, its alive - awesome to watch & amazing work indeed
IIS should have an (Amination of the Month) award