Jupiter 17/3/16

[Werisit]

I've been waiting for Jupiter to reach a decent height at a sociable hour for a bit of imaging. S@N has a bit on moon shadow transits so with a clear forecast I thought it might be worth a bit of effort setting up properly. I had hoped for a double transit with the GRS...Dream on! It's been cloudy for all those.

So this is the backside (if you'll excuse the expression) with the shadow of Callisto. Callisto itself is off the disc at a little before 12 o'clock. I was surprised to see the loop feature on the bottom of the NEB. I hadn't really considered that there might be any visible detail other than the GRS. How wrong could I be. After I'd finished imaging I had a proper look with the 4mm Vixen (225x). Absolutely beautiful. 

 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Werisit

[Smithysteve]

That's a great image Alan. You were in the right place at the right time to capture the Callisto transit 

I witnessed it too and agree it was a great sight. Not sure when the next one is due yet, I have fast forwarded to the next Callisto pass in front of Jupiter on April 3rd but the shadow misses the disc... 

Nice one! Thanks for sharing it.

[+Bino-viewer]

I think the next (evening) shadow transit of Callisto occurs on May 23rd.

 

Nice image Alan : one for your scrapbook 

[+Ibbo]

well captured

 

[catman161]

Nice one Alan. Some great detail captured there. What were your details? Scope/camera/stack size/capture/stacking software etc?

[+Graham]

That is one brilliant capture. 

[Stephen]

That is a vey nice image Alan

[Werisit]

16 hours ago, catman161 said:

 

Nice one Alan. Some great detail captured there. What were your details? Scope/camera/stack size/capture/stacking software etc?

Thank's for the nice comments folks.

Details were as follows.

Scope=Altair Astro 130 EDT, Camera=ZWO ASI 120 MC-S, Astro Engineering 4 x Image Mate, Sky-Watcher Flip Mirror Diagonal (Invaluable for finding the target), Mount Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro. Processed in Registax 5.1.  130 frames from 500. Original frame size 640 x 480. A bit of fiddling and cropped in Photoshop.

I had to image it to one side of the frame as there was a large dust bunny in the middle that I had to avoid. That's why it's a square format. The final image is a bit big really. I'll try a re-size to 525 x 525 pixel image to see if that's any better. 

[catman161]

Thanks for the details Alan. Try and get at least 3000 frames next time. The more data you have the less noise you will have in the resulting image. There is a limit however due to rotation. Although you can go for a lot more frames, say 10000 and use the derotate function in winjupos.

[Werisit]

Phew, 10,000 would fill my hard drive! I have got a 1,000 frame run but Registax won't open it. I will have to persevere though cos you're absolutely right. The more data the better. 

[catman161]

Try autostakkert!2 for the stacking process of registrar is having trouble opening the larger file sizes. I do not use registrar ft the stacking process, I much prefer AS!2