Jupiter Oct 19th RGB plus my first IR effort

[Quark]

Hi All,

Last night I tried to IR image Jupiter for the first time. My new Astronomik Planetary IR Pro 807 filter sent by Don from Bintel arrived mid afternoon. The seeing for this session was only fare at 5 to 6 / 10.

I have posted an RGB and an IR image, Europa is to the East with it's shadow transiting the planet.

It is really interesting to blink between the RGB and IR images, they were taken at similar times. The 4 quite prominent barges in the SEB nearly disappear in the IR image. The white ovals in the STrZ appear similar in RGB and IR while the fine detail in the NEB and North Polar region seems better defined in IR.

Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

[bird]

Nice work Trevor, looks like we were both imaging at around the same time last night.

cheers, Bird

[DavidU]

Very interesting Trev. Will the IR will be a future imaging tool for you??

[telecasterguru]

Trevor,

The IR is quite different. How many images were there?

Frank

[Quark]

Thanks Anthony, look forward to seeing your results, I am sure they will be stunning.



Thanks David, I do have a specific job in mind for this IR filter. It may be very helpful for the work that I do with Saturn lightning storms for Georg Fischer.

I know that this filter is well suited to Mars and Jupiter. The white clouds that I image on Saturn that lightning is associated with, due to the rapid vertical motion of material from the lower layer of water ice crystals, at a depth of about 200 km, would be hotter than the upper ammonia ice clouds that this material punches through. Therefore the IR filter should really highlight these specific clouds and allow me to discriminate between normal long lived cloud systems and those that are the result of lightning.

I will discuss this with Georg but I think it will likely be most beneficial, especially in times of poor seeing, to get scientifically useful data. The passage of photons at IR wavelengths through our atmosphere are much less effected than are photons at the longer RGB wavelengths.




Thanks Frank, this IR imaging is new to me and I am sure I will develop my capture and processing technique as I go.
This particular image is the best 600 of 1300 frames.

[Lester]

Very nice images Trevor. I have used a IR filter on Mars in the past and found that it was able to see through our atmosperic disturbances and settle down bad seeing to something quite acceptable.

I will look forward to your results with it on Saturn.

[h0ughy]

would the IR be a product of what Jupiter emits or is it what it reflects and the element properties of the feature?

[Quark]

Hi Houghy, Jupiter is relatively bright in IR as it is a net emitter of energy, that is it emits more energy than it absorbs from the Sun. Isolated hot spot have been recorded previously that were associated with impacts such as SL9 and the Bird Strike. Lightning occurs within the atmosphere of Jupiter so I suspect that very active storms my also show up well in IR. If Io was in transit it would definitely be extremely bright in IR. I would think, intuitively, that reflected light would not be bright in IR, thinking about how air born IR cameras show up body heat very brightly in the night here on Earth.



Thanks Lester, your experience with Mars would seem to support the documentation supplied by Astronomik on the characteristics of this filter.