Jupiter 24th Oct - double transit + GRS

[naskies (Dave)]

Here's a quick process from my efforts in capturing the double transit of Ganymede and Io (according to Stellarium) across Jupiter last night. Thanks to sitting outside for several hours, I even saw a few - what I assumed to be - Orionid meteors.

Technical details: William Optics FLT-132 on NEQ6, 5x TeleVue PowerMate, Canon 5DmkII, EOS Camera Movie Record in 5x crop mode at ISO 800 and 1/30 sec, best 10% of ~ 3000 frames stacked in RegiStax

As luck would have it, my quick and dirty polar alignment using a compass and the NEQ6's bubble level ended up being remarkably accurate... only a gentle nudge was needed every half an hour at minimum speed to keep Jupiter within the 5x crop mode field of view.

I recorded the entire transit (minus eos_movrec crashes, flat battery, etc) from before 10 pm until just after 3 am (33 GB of MJPEG AVIs). Hopefully I'll be able to assemble a nice animation out of it

Edit: Io is actually on the other side of the shadow... I forgot to update the line when I flipped the image.

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice work! Well done!

[Shiraz (Ray)]

good result. looking forward to the animation. Regards Ray

[naskies (Dave)]

Thanks Mike and Ray! After getting some sleep this morning, I was a bit surprised that I didn't notice how bad the white balance was

Here's another frame (with better white balance) from what's looking like the best seeing and fewest clouds of the evening. RegiStax is slowly doing its thing... taking 35 minutes per 2 minute video just to do the alignment on this laptop.

[Derek Klepp]

Thanks for the pics Dave. Had a look myself through the Dob. Was worth getting up for.

[Clayton]

Very nice work Dave

[naskies (Dave)]

Thanks Derek and Rob!