A couple of decent Jupiters, an animation and a wee bit of interest on a Saturn

[andyc]

I've had an incredible run of tremendous seeing in Sydney over the past month and a half, with many nights up there at 8 or 9/9, and a remarkable number of those with the Great Red Spot in view. This has been scientifically interesting too, as material from the South Tropical Disturbance has been streaming around the GRS, a sight seen up close in the last Juno perijove.

I made an animation of the STropD/GRS interaction (https://photos.app.goo.gl/KXNblRdP3Mpm8cnB2).

I tried a 360 map (https://photos.app.goo.gl/0MHgrEfl0EWh9SrW2) all-nighter for Jupiter on 24th April, and made some equatorial and polar maps out of that night. The GRS area was perfect seeing, but unfortunately seeing degraded for Oval BA. The full set of maps are here (https://photos.app.goo.gl/RvEPaXypE1Jwwvpo2).

I've not taken many decent images of Saturn yet, but saw a nice small bit of activity the other day

Jupiter album for 2018 (https://photos.app.goo.gl/hUV8ABBreO6hBMjw1)
Saturn album for 2018 (https://photos.app.goo.gl/fmgVczrwN6Y23hEj1)

[rustigsmed]

nice work andy, awesome detail! do you really take about 13 mins of data for jupiter? i thought it rotated too fast for that length of time.

cheers

russ

[John K]

Terrific!

[andyc]

Thanks Russ & John!
Russ, that's the magic of WinJupos. You're right that it rotates much too fast otherwise - I partly follow Chris Go's method, which involves taking sequences of R, G, B, R, G, B etc, each exposure is only 35s long, but gets me about 2500 frames, of which I'll stack ~80%. With Winjupos, you can derotate/combine the frames together to get much better signal to noise without losing detail to the planetary rotation, ending up in a better final image. You can chuck away the bad stacks as well.

[rustigsmed]

hi andy,
i appreciate the response, i knew winjupos could do some de-rotation but didn't think it could extend that long - that's awesome! :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Great shots Andy, so much detail :thumbsup:

Mike

[Sebbie]

Superb results Andy, great GRS detail and fantastic animation showing evolution over time.

Regards,
Seb

[beren]

Brilliant :)

[andyc]

Thanks everyone :)
yup, some observers derotate 30 minutes or more with Saturn, though with Jupiter I think you'll get some edge effects with much more than 20min or so. But up to 15min has typically been fine for me.

[astronobob]

Excellent work & results, Andy :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[p1taylor]

Great shots Andy, good detail.


peter