Animation! Io shadow transit and Ganymede crescent!

[iceman]

Well here it is, finally.

A 15-frame animation of the Io shadow transit, Io transitting onto the disc of Jupiter, and Ganymede coming out of Jupiter's shadow.

The thing which excited me most, was that Ganymede actually starts as a crescent! Across about 3 frames you can see ganymede come out from behind the curved shadow of Jupiter! :eyepop:

The seeing fluctuated between 5 (or below) and 7 out of 10, and as such, about 5 of the 15 frames are rubbish, but they had to be included to make the animation complete. Some clouds passed through a few avi's as well, which made colour balance matching very difficult.

Attached are 4 of the better frames.

Taken at 5fps with the ToUcam 840k using 900nc firmware and Optimised Color macro. 120 frames of each channel (R/G/B) were stacked before the usual processing routine in AstraImage and then photoshop.

I just love watching these animations, and seeing how different latitudes rotate faster or slower. It really makes the planet (and image) seem alive.

Download the animation here:
Animated GIF (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/20060326-jupiter_anim.gif) (650k)

It will animate slowly as your computer downloads the whole image, and then it will animate faster.

Comments welcome!

[RB]

One of the best anims I've seen Mike.
It really puts things in perspective and gives a 3D feel.
Ganymede's crescent shape and the rotation of Joop.
Simply amazing.

Well done.

[davidpretorius]

brilliant mike & the beauty of a eq platform, i have to rotate mine due to field rotations.

I will be redoing mine from the same morning soon.

[venus]

Awesome stuff

[Robert_T]

Superb Mike! :thumbsup: I had captured this same sequence with my mewlon, but not to same quality. I couldn't work out where the hell Ganymede came from, as it wasn't there, then in was, yet was approaching the planet... so Ganymede was so far from the equator it was only masked by the polar end of Jupiter's shadow... now it makes sense.

I've attached my sequence from this same night for comparison.... now I look closely you can see clearly Ganymede appearing as a little blib and then expanding, even some detail there.

cheers,

[southern 40]

Wow great shots of jupiter guys im going to have to give this sort of imaging a go.:thumbsup:

[matt]

Excellent stuff...

and amazing that it looks precisely as Starry Night had predicted in the heads-up I'd given in the week leading up to that event:thumbsup:

How incredible is the software these days. The phasing on Ganymede looks exactly as depicted in SN!!!

Mike, I'm glad you captured this sequence like I'd hoped in my post.

I just knew this would look superb, but don't have the skills myself to put something like that together.

Well done, mate.

[iceman]

Thanks guys.

DP, I get field rotation when I reset the platform, which I have to do every 40 minutes or so. All of my animations so far have been over a period of time that required a platform reset.

I rotate them in Animation Shop while constructing the animation. It's a bit of guess work (trial and error) as to how much rotation it needs.. half of my images in this sequence needed a 4° clockwise rotation.

Thanks matt, I was really surprised at how well the ganymede phase came out.

[matt]

I've been meaning to post just how impressed I am with your work, Mike.

Honestly, you're really doing some truly awesome stuff. Right at the limit of the gear we're working with. Many congrats.

Hoping to catch up with you at an upcoming astro meet for both a socialise and an imaging chat:thumbsup:

[ving]

howd i miss this one.
thes animations show just how variable seeing can be :)