clear sky chart

Job 9:9

Job 9:9-10
9 He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion,
the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.
10 He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed,
miracles that cannot be counted.
NIV

Sunday, July 31, 2011

My Best Jupiter Images Yet

I was busy yesterday.  I rebuilt the optical tube on my 127mm because that home made focuser just wasnt aligned and I could not improve on it.  The optical tube was also too short, which I made up the difference using a piece of 2 inch pvc.  I had another piece of 5 inch tube that was a little bigger than the correct size, so I cut the tube, and it is now the perfect length.  I have also aquired those 2 114mm reflectors.  I removed one of the focusers from the worse of the 2 scopes and epoxied it to a new end plate made from a piece of raw electronic printed circuit board material.

Everything is nicely aligned now.  I started photographing Jupiter around 0400 local (0800Z).  I finished the session taking a sequence of 7-1000 frame AVI's to be used to make this animation:

As you can see, the detail that you can see on the planet is real and not noise due to sharpening.  I actually was a little conservative on the amount of sharpening that I did on the image.  The GRS is visible, as well as a barge in the NEB.  Note that the NNTeB and the NTeB are both resolved and rotate.  Detail in the EZ is resolved.  Going to the south, I am resolving a north and south component in the SEB with white spots seperating the 2.  The STeB & SSTeB are there, but poorly resolved, however you can see rotation there.

This is my first attempt at an animation.  I havent quite figured out how to make an avi animation, but this animated gif worked out.






The following images are images I had taken earlier in the evening, testing the changes made to the scope.   I could see right away from the images on the screen that I had made progress.  My most detailed still image I believe is to the left.  I have never been able to get this much detail before.  Also, the red spot is more yellowish in this image, which approximates the color I have seen in other recent photos.

I took quite a few AVI's this evening, and if I posted everything, this would be a rather long post.  I will, therefore, put up only the best images I took this morning.









This last image is a tossup between the "best" image at the top of this post.  This image shows more detail in the white areas than the other, but the other shows a bit more contrast.   The 2 images were taken about 5 minutes apart.  The difference between the 2 are mostly post processing differences.

This morning's conditions seemed quite good, transparency was excellent because of the lower humidity, and seeing wasnt half bad, better than average.

I am still having trouble finding the optimum focus.  It is difficult to tell on the screen .  Basically, I have been shooting for sharpness on the fully lit side of the disk, as well as best contrast in the belts.

Also, I was able to see (but not photograph) Mars.  I believe it is still quite small.  The next morning I do this, perhaps I'll take an AVI or 2 of Mars, just to see if I can see anything with it so far away.  I doubt i will be able to, which is why I didnt attempt it this morning.

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