The Dutch Observatory

Saturday evening March 1st was very nice with stable skies.  Larry Owens and I did take the opportunity to make the first JWF image with the new Big-O scope.  1500 out of 3000 stacked in Autostackert2 and sharpened in Registax6.

The calm after the storm from Friday morning.  The seeing was good at times, and a lot better than in recent months.  Captured 4 complete IRGB series stacked and de-rotated 3 of them while the Great Red Spot was transiting the central meridian.  Each avi 3000 frames and stacked 1000 in each.

Well, the storm of the decade was good for something, it gave me time to process my Jupiter images from last Saturday with the Ganymede transit.  This is an 11 minute capture of two RGBI series with a total of 32,000 frames of which 4,000 were stacked in AS2, sharpened in Registax 6, derotated and color combined in WinJupos and post processed in Photoshop. Not bad for the first serious derotation process attempt with some reasonable data.

The last image of a series capturing Jupiter during an Io transit showing also the GRS.  The purpose of the session was to capture enough data (32GB) to spend some time, whenever I can find it, to experiment with detrotation of the images/avis  in the processing cycle.  This image was processed the convential way without derotation.

It was cold this morning to image the Sun at freezing temps, but tonight it was worse imaging Jupiter and to top it off, the AVIs of my RGB runs were recorded in the wrong format.  Except the last set when I changed the ROI.  Here an RGB composite of Jupiter of the evening of January 3rd.  Transparency was good, seeing OK.  Stacked 900 out of 2000 in AS2 and sharpened in Registax6.  Color combine and final processing in PS CS5.

Thanksgiving morning.  It was the coldest morning thus far with 19 degrees but the sky seemed clear.  However the seeing was far from good.  However, since I got up I made a few runs.  Here the best one with the GRS.  Can’t wait for conditions to change.

Got up early this morning to attempt to image ISON.  However did not see the comet.  It was probably still in the trees behind my neighbor’s house.  So instead, I started imaging Jupiter.  Here another Jupiter IRGB image in less than average seeing.

Had time Saturday morning to image Jupiter.  Transparency was OK but seeing was not very good.  Here the best run with Io approaching Jupiter and its shadow just touching “Following”  limb, while the GRS is ready to leave the planetary disk.

Got up early this morning and was able to make few capture runs before the clouds got too much in the way.  Here the best of them, still with seeing and transparency not good at all.  The moon is Ganymede and the GRS is just moving off the planetary disk on the left.

It was supposed to rain and storm, but when I woke up at 5:00 the sky was clear.  So another opportunity to gain some experience with the ASI120MM imaging Jupiter.  Stability was not great but I am posting anyway what I got. I got reacquainted with Emiel Kraaikamp’s stacking software.  Wow, how that has come since the early beginnings.  Congratulations Emiel!!   Two days in a row the GRS!!