Jupiter, though a 20" scope

A beautiful shot Dave. Great detail.

thanks for all the kind comments guys.Its been a long time since I took any planetary images with this scope, and I have to say it was a re-learning experience for me. I also use a 12" lx200 and a 6" MK67 and when the obsessionators optics are cooled, neither of these scopes can hold a torch to the eyepiece views it shows of the planets, but the optics do have to be cooled, the effect is surprisingly dramatic !!
If I get the time, I'll go through the avi frame by frame and handpick the stack sequence, its a mega pain though.

@ Aubrey, I think you're right, the lower bigger northern belt is the north equatorial belt, followed by the north tropical zone followed by the north temperate belt, a rule to remember is zones are whitish, belts are dark. The n. tropical zone had dissipated in recent times, but now its back with a vengence.I really like the way the southern eq belt fades and changes colour to the right of the GRS, I was lucky to get the aspect I got. It's like the GRS got some eyeliner and eyeshadow
Also, it almost looks like the N eq belt has a variable darker sinusoidal wave inside it, dont know how real that is.

@ martinus, you're absolutely right, but I'm limited by the toucam. The 3500 frames was at 15fps, so thats nearly a 4 minute video, I then spliced it up to 1 minute stacks, cos you cant really have a stack from anything spanning longer then a minute with Jupiter, and this was the best of the lot.
with the toucam, 15fps is a compromise between quality and capture speed, the toucam gives reduced quality at 30fps, and even at 15.
5fps gives good quality but the seeing could get you aswell as Jupiter's rotation. I never got around to buying s decent planetary camera.
Next time I'm gonna turn off the mini dew heater on the secondary, it keeps the secondary at 2 degrees above ambient to prevent dew, turning it off for 30 mins would do no harm to it.

This reminds me of a shot of Saturn Frank and I captured nearly 5 years ago,
www.irishastronomy.org/index.php?option=...3085&Itemid=40#63241
hard to believe that was so long ago, I can remember that observing session like it was last week !!!


As for Jupiter itself, the differances in the southern eq belt either side of the GRS is dramatic, one side is smooth while the other shows alot of turbulance, it was very striking visually.

When processing the image, it is so so easy to push the sharpness and wavelet setting too far to prize out more detail, I like the image to look as natural as possible, it is a little soft though, maybe the seeing will be better next time.

Dave_Lillis wrote: I never got around to buying s decent planetary camera.

Because you've no change from the miiiiiillion euro you spent on the Obsession?

It sounds like cooling the optics is involved which makes sense with that much glass.

I think I've probably been using my SPC900 at too high a frame-rate. I'll test it at 5FPS next time I have an opportunity and see if I can detect any improvement.

Saturn image is lush by the way.

oh that's fabulous Dave. and with a webcam too!

I'd forgotten about the 5fps being so much better quality than 15 upwards. K3ccd did some iq tests at different frame rates and the differences are quite dramatic:

www.pk3.org/Astro/index.htm?astrophoto_toucampro_exposure.htm

The eyepiece view was pretty much as you see it here, except not as colorful.

Holy cow - amazed you can see details like that visually. No wonder those Obsessions are raved about.

You are so right, Dave. The North Temperate Zone is staggeringly bright, and the North Temperate Zone is massive too. You're spot on!

Aubrey.

Great image Dave, lovely colour and detail, yep I think 60-90 seconds
is about as far you can go before rotation kicks in with a colour webcam
also I think you did extremely well @15fps, as I understand it anything above
10fps.can be problematic.

BTY what capture program did you use.

Well done again.
Tony