Jupiter - 13th April pre-SPSP

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

Even though I was planning to leave for SPSP on Friday morning, I didn't pack the scope yet because the seeing was predicted to be good over Thursday night/Friday morning. I was up from 1:30am until about 4am capturing Jupiter.

I didn't get much sleep before SPSP but I'm glad I made the effort to stay up because the seeing WAS very good.

I captured 12 avi's in total (at 1/30s 30fps). I used a dew shield which helped stop some dew forming on the primary and secondary, though transparency will still down a tad. Histogram was about 75% full with gain at 100% full.

I stacked 500 frames from each of 3 alignment points, out of the 1200 or so captured (40 seconds on each colour channel).

The 3 attachments are the only 3 i've processed so far - avi's 1, 6 and 12, representing the start, middle and end of the session. I forgot to switch the fan off at the start and only remembered after avi 4 I think. I think that's why the first image looks a bit "shaky".

I'm very pleased with the last 2 images - loads of fine detail. The last one shows Red Jr very well resolved, and 2 white spots above and to the right of it that look like they could merge? It appears there could also be a very small white spot between the two (just above them).

The last attachment is a 150% sized version of avi 12.

There's still loads more to process, will post others if they turn out better.

Thanks for looking.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Wow Mike, they are pretty special shots. The detail you are getting is fantastic. Another round of prize winning images 'eh?

btw do you always use 100% gain with the DMK? I haven't had many opportunities to experiment yet, but that much gain in the ol' ToUcam made the image pretty much unusable for me.

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Nice to see Mike, keep up the good work!

Bird

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks Paul and Anthony.

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

btw do you always use 100% gain with the DMK? I haven't had many opportunities to experiment yet, but that much gain in the ol' ToUcam made the image pretty much unusable for me.

Mostly 100%, yes. Depends on transparency and framerate and the object.

Since Saturn was/is so dim, I almost always used 100% gain and even had to use 1/15s exposure (15fps) to get a full histogram. Jupiter is much brighter and at 15fps I could usee less than 100% gain (sometimes 80% ) but I use 30fps (1/30fps) to get more frames. Gain has to be at 100% to get the histogram as full as possible.

The DMK is very low noise, even at 100% gain. You really can't compare it with the ToUcam. The background is black even in the raw frames.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Might give saturn another go then and really crank it up.

[h0ughy (David)]

Nice work Mike. Even the "bad" images look great ;-)

[matt]

Good work, Mike.

It might just be my screen at work but they look a little orange/red and the preceding limb's a little dark.

But gee.... the detail is excellent.

What a great year we're having with Joops.

It must have killed you to sit on this data until after SPSP?

[Dennis]

Another stunning set Mike - a “well done” somehow seems quite inadequate for these amazing images of Jupiter you have been capturing and processing.

Cheers

Dennis