We keep thinking that we have taken our last planetary image for the year only to be surprised with another opportunity.
With another hopeful forecast, last night we set up at around 6pm to image the planets again. Not once did either of us look up and notice that the sky was full of clouds! Undeterred, we went out during twilight and Jupiter was in the clear. It was still very light but the GRS was close to central in the disk so we caught the first image. The clouds swamped Jupiter so for a joke we moved to Mars at <20 degrees elevation, only to be surprised that it was far more stable than on any of the recent nights. We imaged it in colour.
We then went back to Jupiter as it had again reappeared and took the second image in much darker sky. The GRS was still visible. There were significant differences in the south equatorial belt to the right of the GRS compared to our similar image on the 15 December.
Then we returned to Mars and tried an R+IR 610nm capture, during which we were photo bombed. The first video was stable but by the time we took a second video things were back to normal shaking like jelly. That's when we packed it in!
If this ends up being the last planets for the season we are pretty happy with the images.
Thanks David
We keep thinking that's it, we're done, but another opportunity happens. It can't go on as they are so low now that the roof of the house is going to put an eventual end to it.
