As per Dave47Tuc's recommendation, I wanted to get out and catch the GRS + Ganymede shadow transit.
Turns out I didn't get either..
When I first took the scope out to cool down, I had a quick look at Jupiter and the seeing looked quite good. The GRS was still on the face, as was ganymede somewhere (I couldn't see it).
I went out a bit later to start imaging (using my recent acquisition, the 2.4x barlow) with the ToUcam. The GRS was barely on the face still, just peeking around the corner, and the ganymede shadow transit hadn't started yet.
I took some avi's with the 2.4x barlow, and then for kicks, I stacked the 2.4x with my 2x. I don't know if that gives me 4.4x or more (anyone know?), but yeh.. image scale good, seeing bad.
I tried a new technique too, of trying to manual track the dob while recording, instead of recording each pass while the dob is stationary. So I'd set it up so the planet was about to drift into the FOV, start recording, and then try and pull the dob to keep the planet in the CCD FOV. Of course it wobbled about and produced some bad frames, but in general I was able to keep it in the field of view for about two times longer than normal and my hope is that it would reduce the motion blur I get from capturing as it whizzes through the FOV. I used Virtual Dub to join the avi's together after, and deleted the bad frames that were blurred and out of the FOV as I struggled to pull the dob slowly and smoothly.
I then used my 2x barlow on its own with the same technique at the end, but the seeing was getting worse and the clouds were closing in. The clouds stopped me from getting any ganymede shadow avi's unfortunately.
Anyway i'm not really happy with these images as the seeing ended up being bad instead of good, so there's no real detail to see.. plus, with the large image scale ones it really showed up how dirty my CCD chip is - every frame had dust donuts over it so I'm not sure how registax handled that one.. probably just blurred everything together by the looks of the final result.
Anyway enough blah.. In chronological order:
Here's the 2.4x barlow image - the GRS is just peeking out on the top left hand side.. south is up. Focal length around 3000mm.
Here's my blurry 2.4x + 2x barlow image. The seeing just wasn't up for that magnification, and focus was by eye as the planet whizzed through the FOV in 3.6 seconds. Focal length around 5500mm. Image scale good, result bad..
And finally here's the 2x barlow image at the end of the session. The GRS has gone and the shadow hasn't yet started. Focal length around 2500mm.
Yes Gary, i'm a masochist
