First Jupiter from Brissy

[matt]

Well...even with the windy conditions and the obvious presence of jetstream, I finally managed to find time to dig all the gear out and capture my first planetary images in several months.

I'd almost forgotten how everything works. Almost!

Anyhoo...it's a bit late in the season and it's a little rough and ready, but I can't help pointing the scope at ol' Jove, particularly when he's directly overhead.

If you look closely, you can see Ganymede transiting the planet at upper right, closely accompanied by its shadow.

I've also included a Mitchell 150x resample. The seeing really wasn't up to it, but what the heck. It's fun crankin' it

Thanks for looking.

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice image Matt, welcome back! Now get that DMK cranking! I haven't captured a single photon in over a month!

Are you sure that's Ganymede and it's shadow? To be so close, they'd have to be almost at opposition. Ganymede should be about a full Jupiter width away this far from opposition.

What date/time was it captured? I can't find a moon transit that might explain it.

[matt]

Mike.

Image captured around 18.35 tonight.

Have attached a screen capture from Astrocalc.

Perhaps that's not its shadow? It could just be a cloud feature creating the illusion? Sure looks like its shadow when viewed in prior and successive AVIs. Seems to move along with the moon as it transits.

Cheers

[iceman (Mike)]

ah it's certainly ganymede, but it's shadow doesn't transit until after 9:30pm.

You could try MAP'ing on the moon as well as features on the planet and see if it's an alignment/stack error?

Or it could be a dark polar feature.

[beren]

Very nice image Matt, huge image scale and great result from the conditions described. Not sure if its the right way do it but have you tried using the Match colour option under image adjustments in PS CS2 to adjust the luminance, might be my screen just appears a little dark.

[Ric]

Hi Matt, that's a nice image. Glad to see you getting back into action again.

Cheers

[matt]

Cheers guys. It's good to be back into it.

Mike.

I've tried using the MAP feature but can't seem to get it working for me.

It's clearly something I'm doing wrong or not doing, but still haven't got it figured.

I need to spend more time on it to get it under control. At the moment I'm just using the one box around the entire planet.

Beren - I'll give that little tip a try. I've got PS7, but I'm sure it has that feature tucked away somewhere.

Images do tend to vary from screen to screen, especially in terms of colour rendition and brightness/contrast. It looked bright enough on my lappy, though

Thanks for the feedback.

Cheers

[Dennis]

Hi Matt

What a terrific "first light" Jupiter for Brisbane! You have certainly opened you account with much aplomb, with such an impressive effort after a very long lay off - well done!

Cheers

Dennis