Jupiter Animation (2.5 hours)

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Hi guys,

I’m still around! I still browse through the forums several times a day, I’m just a perpetual lurker.

So I spent last night (07-08-2009 through 08-08-2009) putting this animation together of Jupiter. I captured an AVI every 5 minutes between 10:30pm and 1:00am – 2.5 hours. Was very cold! I used my 10” Newtonian scope on a vanilla EQ6 mount with a DMK21AU04.AS CCD and a 2X Barlow. I used Registax to process the frames, used PCRE to centre them all, resized them to 150% for image scale then used Beneton Movie GIF to put the animation together.

Here is the result – Warning: Big File! ~ 3.4 mb!

I didn’t get the “Bird Strike” in this animation (), but I did get Europa, Io and the GRS.

I have a question though – if you watch the animation, you’ll see that towards the end Jupiter starts to get a bit dimmer. This confused me as I was using the same exposure settings for the entire session and Jupiter was still quite high in the sky. Would this have been due to seeing conditions? I checked the mirror etc for dew, but didn’t see any. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Splendid Chris,Thats so cool.
Cheers Kev.

[iceman (Mike)]

That's really great, an excellent smooth animation.

I noticed the dimming too - I suspect it was probably dew.

Excellent work!

[Lester]

Hi Chris, that is a very good animation, with heaps of detail plus the moons add to it also.

Dimming can be also caused by thin cloud. I have had this where the cloud isn't visible to the naked eye, only the dimming of Jupiter on the laptop is the tell tale sign. Dew also as mentioned is a possibility.

[gregbradley]

A very nice animation. Great job.

Greg.

[AlexN]

Fantastic work Chris! Looks awesome!

[renormalised (Carl)]

Great job Chris....well done

[Quark (Trevor)]

Top effort Chris,

Some great detail and well put together.

Regarding the dimming. When imaging over such long periods the histogram is you best friend. It will drop off before you have detected any high altitude cloud that may not even be perceptible to the eye.

If the situation arises where the live image dims during a capture you can compensate by adjusting gain or exposure on the run, however for continuity over a long period, keeping an eagle eye on the histogram is the go.

Again, very well done.
Regards
Trevor

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Terrific animation, Chris. Heaps of detail and smooth motion. Well done. Would have been great in colour.

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

Hi Chris

Super animation - great detail in all frames - some are exceptional - well spent time on a fantastic project!

Thanks for not just 'lurking'.

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Thanks guys!

Regarding the dimming. When imaging over such long periods the histogram is you best friend. It will drop off before you have detected any high altitude cloud that may not even be perceptible to the eye.

If the situation arises where the live image dims during a capture you can compensate by adjusting gain or exposure on the run, however for continuity over a long period, keeping an eagle eye on the histogram is the go.

Yeah, I had the histogram up while imaging (I had it a bit on the lower side to begin with, unfortunately) and I did notice it decreasing a bit. I didn’t want to push the exposure or gain up because I thought it might make the animation look a bit discontinuous. The dimming doesn’t really bother me, I was just curious as to what might have caused it.