Jupiter 31 Jan

[derkraken (John)]

This is my first reasonable picture of Jupiter, on my third attempt.

Afocal with a 6mm TMB Planetary, TV 2X Barlow, manual 10 inch Skywatcher Dob.

Camera was a Canon a590IS Powershot, used at maximum zoom.

I had the usual problems with using the mount at such high magnification!

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

Nice shot of Jupiter John good natural colour not overdone.

[bobbyf (Bob)]

Looks good to me John
Is this a single picture or a Registax image from a video?
Also, how did it look visually? Could you easily make out the GRS like in your image?
I've been getting quite frustrated recently from the visual and webcam views of Jupiter with my 10" Newt.
Perhaps i'm in need of collimation, or a better eyepiece (GSO SV 15mm) or webcam (Phillips Toucam ii i think) but i was expecting better results than i'm getting, and i'm using TV powermates for magnification.
Cheers

Bob

[derkraken (John)]

Thanks for the comments.

I took a 9 or 10 second video, 277 frames, and used autostakkert to align and stack the best 55% of the frames, then adjusted the wavelets, gamma, contrast and brightness in Registax.

Visually, I could see a softer, lower contrast version of what is in the final image - I've attached a single frame from the video, which is pretty much what it looked like on the camera's lcd. It was not by any means the clearest view I have had of Jupiter. The last few nights I had been out, however, the seeing had been far worse.

This year Jupiter is quite low in the sky, and I find most nights I do not have a very good view of it. Last year was much better!

I also have a 15mm Superview. I haven't looked at Jupiter with it for a while, but I'm pretty sure on axis the view was fine with a 2x barlow, on a night when the seeing was good.

Hope that helps.

[bobbyf (Bob)]

Thanks for the info, yes it did seem better to me last year, and back then i was using an older 8" Newt, without TV powermates, but i didnt have a webcam to capture it. I was hoping for a lot better than i'm getting with more aperture, PM's and a webcam.
I guess the key is to keep trying, and hope the seeing improves.

Cheers

Bob