Jupiter 24th Oct - double transit + GRS

[naskies]

Here's a quick process from my efforts in capturing the double transit of Ganymede and Io (according to Stellarium) across Jupiter last night. Thanks to sitting outside for several hours, I even saw a few - what I assumed to be - Orionid meteors.

Technical details: William Optics FLT-132 on NEQ6, 5x TeleVue PowerMate, Canon 5DmkII, EOS Camera Movie Record in 5x crop mode at ISO 800 and 1/30 sec, best 10% of ~ 3000 frames stacked in RegiStax

As luck would have it, my quick and dirty polar alignment using a compass and the NEQ6's bubble level ended up being remarkably accurate... only a gentle nudge was needed every half an hour at minimum speed to keep Jupiter within the 5x crop mode field of view.

I recorded the entire transit (minus eos_movrec crashes, flat battery, etc) from before 10 pm until just after 3 am (33 GB of MJPEG AVIs). Hopefully I'll be able to assemble a nice animation out of it :)

Edit: Io is actually on the other side of the shadow... I forgot to update the line when I flipped the image.

[iceman]

Nice work! Well done!

[Shiraz]

good result. looking forward to the animation. Regards Ray

[naskies]

Thanks Mike and Ray! After getting some sleep this morning, I was a bit surprised that I didn't notice how bad the white balance was :(

Here's another frame (with better white balance) from what's looking like the best seeing and fewest clouds of the evening. RegiStax is slowly doing its thing... taking 35 minutes per 2 minute video just to do the alignment on this laptop.

[Derek Klepp]

Thanks for the pics Dave. Had a look myself through the Dob. Was worth getting up for.

[Clayton]

Very nice work Dave :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[naskies]

Thanks Derek and Rob!