Jupiter

The following are several images of Jupiter acquired in October and the beginning of November. ASI178MC was used to acquire 2000 frames at 60 fps at a capture area of 1024x768. A Meade 2X Barlow was used to magnify the image. The best 20% of frames were stacked and averaged using Autostakkert! and wavelet sharpened in Paintshop Pro 2021 using unsharp masking scripts written by the author. Jupiter's low altitude and mediocre early evening Northeast seeing have made imaging Jupiter a real challenge. 

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Jupiter + satellite Io - 10/23/2020 from patio

I don't usually operate from my tree blocked, light polluted patio. However this particular evening there was a short clear sky window where Jupiter was clear of trees. Over a period of about 20 minutes I acquired eleven stills that I stitched into the Jupiter rotation video below. Celestron 8 and Meade 2X barlow were used for acquisition.  

NOTE: video has been removed but might be restored in the near future. 

Each still was averaged from 2000 frame videos processed with Autostakkert! and Paintshop Pro.  Seeing was mediocre. None the less details of Jupiter's dynamic atmosphere could be brought out using un-sharp mask scripts I have been experimenting with.  

Jupiter+Io  10/23/2020 @ 19:08 EDT

The skimpy postings to this blog prompted me to go back and review my past trove of lunar and planetary images of which there are many. It's embarrassing so few have been posted. Many of these are superior to images posted more recently.  

So, over the next few weeks I will post a few of the better images each day or two with a little commentary on how the images were acquired and processed in cases when  available. Perusal of my deep sky images suggests I should also do this for my Rick's Deep Sky Imaging blog which I plan to merge with this blog in the near future.

Jupiter 08/09/2020

Back in MA from MD it sucks that I have to quarantine for 14 days but that's life in the era of the Covid-19 virus. I can't get to my favorite local park site with Jupiter and Saturn in prime time. At least I can catch a few imaging glimpses during the short window when the gas giants are between increasingly view blocking trees in front of my apartment terrace. Below is an image of Jupiter taken just after midnight 08/09/2020. 

Seeing was pretty mediocre and building tremors from air conditioners throughout this wood frame building contribute to the blurring and misshaping of Europa. It also didn't help that polar alignment was pretty rough compared to when at a site where Polaris is visible. 

The real value to this exercise was honing in on best settings for imaging the gas giants with the ASI178MC with the 2X Barlow lens. To the east I noticed the gibbous moon with Mars to its right looking quite bright giving me something to look forward to over the next few weeks of planetary imaging. 

Thankfully my quarantine ends right around new moon liberating to travel to my favorite darkish sites for DSO and gas giant imaging. Crossing fingers for clear skies then. 

Jupiter with Europa

Jupiter and Saturn 07/26/2020

Jupiter with Callisto's shadow and Europa to the right. 

Saturn

Jupiter and Saturn

It was July 19th. I finally got out with the new ASI178MC planetary imager. Actually, its the first night I got successful pictures. The previous July 15 was a total bust because I used the wrong imaging format and to short exposure times.

Anyway, this time I imaged in Raw16 and RGB24 paying attention to gain, exposure time and the histogram. For each image 1000 frames were acquired at 1600x1200 format.  Images were projected with a 2X Barlow. Back in Massachusetts, I'm in Maryland for July, I have a 3X Barlow I'll try in the future. I'll also consider a smaller imaging format to get a faster frame rate.

Jupiter 7/19/2020

Saturn 7/19/2020