Do I understand correctly that there will be a double transit (Io and Ganymede) of Jupiter this 16 June evening? And that the GRS may also be completing its transit early on in the double transit? Should be worth a look, even through my little 8" dob? What is the recommended filter to best see the GRS and the moons' shadows? (I only have a choice on what's in my Saxon boxed set - yellow, red or blue )
Conditions aren't predicted to be good here.. which is a shame. I've missed the last 3 clear nights here due to work and sick family. But Rod told me the seeing was rubbish so maybe I haven't missed much
There was one on the 9th while we were at Wartook, my scope was cooling but we got to see it through Anthony's; it was really nice. Naturally the seeing was pretty average that night. It will be too low in the sky for any meaningful imaging here. However it should present a nice image at the viewing night I am going to.
Just thought I would bump this for tonight. Starts in Brissie around 8:40pm and goes through to almost midnight. Pity about the howling jet stream streaking above our heads right now!
Oh well, I suppose jet stream is oodles better than that!
Hah, I’m getting too spoiled, although last night I had to remove the x2 Barlow from the ‘scope as Jupiter was just a shimmering mess. May have to image tonight’s event at Prime Focus, (with no Barlow fitted), as the jet stream map looks slightly worse! A diminutive Joops is better than naught at all eh?
Better put on the freezer suit, 7 degrees for Brissie tonight.
Oh well, so much for that. As an experiment in futility, I plugged in the x2 Barlow and saw Jupiter dissolved into a sea of mushy jelly. Even with the DBK at Prime Focus the image isn’t that much better. However, ‘cos I can, I have fired up K3CCDTools (as it has an interval timer) and set the DBK to take 90 sec AVI’s every 5 mins for 30 intervals.
Nothing will come of it, other than to show the gear will work (hopefully) and the external hard drive will cope with the volume of data and the Tak mount might, just might, keep Jupes in the FOV.
Meanwhile, Stuart Little, a cuddle and a cup of tea seem to be the only alternatives to sitting outside, freezing, eyeballing the Notebook whilst watching the Jovian funky jelly horror show.
Had a friend out tonight with his scope and got to see 2 of jusiters moons start to cross.Totaly awsome.Being new to this I havent the knowledge yet to know all the names of the moons or stars yet other than a few.Unfortunately my scope isnt set quite right yet so I couldnt get a clear shot at it.The only unfortunate disturbance to viewing was the blasted wind causing the scope to shake.
Around 9:00pm I went outside to check the ‘scope. Hmm, not even Takahashi mounts can track well when the RA clutch isn’t clamped tight... Oh well, I managed to capture the double transit from 9:00pm to midnight.
The wind was hammering the ‘scope but as I was imaging at prime focus, the results should be reasonable if at a small image scale. Hopefully a diminutive animation will follow over the next day or so.
Must engage brain, as well as clutches, next time.
I was out at a dark sky location. A little wind, nice and chilly, but superb skies.
Kept checking in until the moons vanished onto the disc. Went off and looked at other things, then came back in time to catch Io's shadow moving along the dark belt (excuse my ignorance of names). Then caught a glimpse of Ganymede's shadow appearing on the limb. Watched on and off until about 3/4 of way through the transit.
What a great lesson in "seeing". I've never really seen (excuse the pun?) this before - well studied it more carefully, I should say. I could get to a 2x barlowed 9mm - around 266x. the 6mm was just too much. I also put the neutral density filter on the barlow to stop from searing my eyeball!
As the planet would drift across the field of view (over 20 sec or so), the image would suddenly snap into place, maybe about 5-6 times during the drift and the shadows were they very sharp features on the surface. The surface details would do the same (of course). It was really a great view and a good lesson!
On filters, I and others have found the light green works very well.
Try all colours as everyones eyes are not the same
Use what suits you, coloured filters can help in your observing of planets.
After failing to focus with the x2 Barlow due to pretty bad seeing, I removed it and fitted the DBK 21AF04.AS (industrial webcam) into the focuser of the Mewlon 180 to see if the image scale at the F12 prime focus would show the event in sufficient detail. The answer was yes, albeit at a small image scale.
The seeing further deteriorated during periods of the AVI captures, but I decided to slog on anyhow, having got thus far. The GRS is just disappearing off the limb.
Here is an image of how it looked at 10:15pm AEST.
Stacks of 221 frames from 1350
Wavelets 1 = 20
Lowest Quality = 95%
Method = Gradient
)
is useful for Jupiter! You'd think this site was selling filters 
