The Dutch Observatory

Jupiter w. Bird Strike on August 5, 2009.  The sky completely covered in a matter of 10 minutes when I was ready to start imaging. However, it paid off to look at the moon light painting the movement of the clouds.  After about 1/2 hour the moon showed its face again, but Jupiter kept hanging in the fringes for another 1/2 hour. When the clouds disappeared for 15 minutes, Jupiter still looked like the Stars and Stripes in a nice breeze on my laptop….

But I got my images with Bird’s Strike at the CM.  For the conditions, I am pretty happy with the result

So compare the size of Bird’s Strike to the images I made on July 24th with the “BS” at the CM.  It is stretching out real nice!

Came back from a long weekend with my wife in the NC mountains.  The sky was mostly clear of clouds but murky, but I gave Jupiter another try eventhough the Bird Strike was at the non visible side of the planet.  Here an image in pretty bad conditions, seeing as well as transparency both 4/10.

Last night 7/3o – 7/31 the conditions were not good again, but I was able to wait until Bird’s Stike was rising.  The image shows the spot as it grows and becomes a distinctive check mark.

After cloudy nights and days, the weather changed changed a little and the forecast was “relative” good (good seeing and below average transparency) for tonight for a few hours.  When I started imaging at midnight it was pretty bad and the first set was imaged through a thin layer of clouds. (You never know if it gets worse!)  But for once the weather cooperated and good seeing and transparency allowed me to image for 1 1/2 hours!   Here one of the images, however without the “Bird Strike” (Wesley’s impact spot)

Today, we would not be able in Atlanta to spot the “Bird Scar” so I imaged Jupiter as we saw it.  The seeing was pretty bad and the wind showed its results also.  So the images I made were not very good.  Since there was nothing new to report, I am posting only one.

The forecast for last night was no cloud cover, but bad transparency and bad seeing.  Thursday’s storms with 1/4″ rain had moved through so I had to give the impact zone another try.  When the spot was to transit, clouds were all over with a sporadic opening or thinner clouds.  I made three RGB sets with each of the components varying very heavy in brightness, to sometimes complete darkeness.  Here the set of three images under advers conditions.  But as I say: A bad shot is better than no shot at all

This is the first image I took after the impact of Jupiter.  The impact was arounf CM 210 so the impact site in this image is about 90 degrees out of site and therefore not visible.  Anyway, it does show that there are no other impacts sites in this area.

This is my first attempt to image an eclipse between two Gallilean moons.  This morning between 6:21 UT and 6:28 UT, the shadow from Io did transit  Ganymede.  This was an annular eclipse, but because of the difference in size of the two moons the drop in intensity of Ganymede was 0.35.  The animation makes up 18 frames between 6:16 UT and 6:34 UT with the transit being captured in frames 6-12 of the animation.  Because I wanted to have Jupiter in the image the moons are a little under exposed.  All images were processed the same:  250 out of 500 frames captured at 1/27 sec in IC Capture, stacked in Registax with mild wavelets applied (same setting for all).  No additional processing was performed in Photoshop.  Photoshop was only used to create the animation.  My next attempts of occultations or eclipses will require to increase the maginification for a better resolution.  Please click the image to start the animation.

Following the partial occultation of Europa by Ganymede, I made some images of Jupiter.  The seeing was very variable during the session and probably peaked at average, but here the best image.

The Clear Sky Clock did forecast bad transparency from 1:00 a.m.  until 3:00 a.m.  However, in reallity at 3:00 am it was clear as a bell, but when I finished setting up, clouds had moved in.  Initially scattered, but soon broken.  so imaging was a challenge.  I ended up taking the red and green channels from one run and combined them with the blue from the previous.  The end result is not too bad.  In addition, I was lucky that at that time the GRS was about to transit the CM and Europa was leaving the preceding limb.  Lots of activity in the NEB with spillovers into the NTrZ, notable 2 dark spots, while two dark interactions with the EZ can also be observed while some light storms in the SSTB seem to reach out in the STZ.