First cut from this morning - Jupiter, Ganymede and Europa

[iceman]

Hi guys

Here's the first cab off the rank.. 20+ other avi's to go through. Seeing was superb, at least 8/10 for most of the 2.5 hours I was out there.

Loads and loads of fine detail visible.

More in the next few days :)

I love March and April in Australia!

[Ric]

WOW, that fantastic Mike. Theres heaps of detail as you say and the Moons are awesome.

Excellent imaging

[Dennis]

Just brilliant Mike, simply stunning.

Cheers

Dennis

[matt]

Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum!!!!!

That's an excellent image and the detail on Gany is 1st rate.

Great stuff, Mike:thumbsup:

[ving]

the amount of detail you are getting these days is stunning mike :thumbsup:

[bird]

Thanks Mike! I hope the seeing stays good for a few more days.

cheers, Bird

[glenc]

:eyepop::eyepop::eyepop::eyepop:

[John K]

That's really impressive Mike, and the detail on Ganymede is fantastic.

Attached is what the JPL simulator showed Ganymede like and you have defenitely captured one of the polar regions and some features(Hope you don't mind me attaching the JPL image to your post)

[rogerg]

I don't know how you do it Mike. 12" GSO and you have detail on a moon of Jupiter, that's just amazing (again). :thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

Beats the last double transit pic hands down Mike.
Bootiful.

[sheeny]

Superb, Mike!

Al.

[[1ponders]]

Whacko Mike :eyepop: What an absolute pearler. :clap:

[davidpretorius]

stunning mike,

this animation will rock.....what a couple of weeks!!!

[mick pinner]

truly amazing

[tornado33]

yes fantastic. How cool was the mirror in relation to ambient?
Scott

[iceman]

Thanks guys, appreciate your comments. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the avi's :(

Not enough time in the day, not a fast enough computer :) I'm hoping the animation will be a cracker, though.

Scott, I believe there was about 0.5-1deg different. It was a fairly mild night, 19deg when I got out there at 3am. It dropped a little before dawn, but there was also a lot of dew and it settled on the mirror when Jupiter got higher, resulting in loss of light. I started at 1/30s exposures and had to drop to 1/15s exposures by the end of the session - and even then it only filled 2/3 of the histogram at full gain.

With my 10", I used to be able to leave the fan on to prevent dew while imaging, and I didn't suffer any vibrations - but with the 12", the fan is bolted to the mirror cell and causes horrible vibrations if I try and image with the fan on. So I have to turn it off, and then i'm prone to dew. I need an alternative!

[xelasnave]

Mike I am so impressed by your work and that of Matt's. Sorry to be so late in offerring you my congratualtions .. I showed my Son he now has developed a real interest in astronomy way past anything I could get him motivated with..thanks for that as well
alex

[RB]

Sensational work Mike.

:eyepop:

[Orion]

Wow Mike, very nice!:thumbsup:

[Rigel003]

Stunning image, Mike with amazing detail on Ganymede. Can I ask about your Registax processing? Do you do separate processing for the moons or use a MAP point for each moon and one for the centre of the planet, or several other MAP points on various details on the planet surface as well?

[iceman]

Thanks Alex, RB, Ed and Graeme.


Sometimes it depends where the moon is. I usually did separate processing of the moon (a separate run through registax) and then made a composite at the end. Lately i've been trying MAP with a 32pt alignment box on the moon, when it's far enough away from the planet.

I use multi-pt MAP on the planet disc as well, because my image scale is large enough that a 128px box only covers a small part of the planet. For these Jupiter avi's, i'm using 3 alignment points (128px each) on Jupiter and then a 4th (32px) on the moon.

A composite still needs to be made sometimes though, if the moon moves too fast. Aligning the colour channels on the planet can mean the moon is out of alignment. So I need to do two re-alignments, one on the planet and one on the moon and then combine then.