The Dutch Observatory

Imaged Jupiter this morning.  At least the sky was not covered with clouds but transparency and seeing were not great.  Here Jupiter with the GRS a little after it passed the CM.  Normally I get the ephemerides from Winjupos, but had a problem with it this morning.  Listed data is from Jupiter2.

Monday morning the sky was filled with thousands of small puffy clouds despite the CSC forecast, but Tuesday morning the transparency was a lot better despite a worse forecast but far from prefect.  Brian Comb reminded me on using a higher focal length, which I had not done on Jupiter this season yet.  Here two images made at F/22 using the Meade 140 2x barlow. 

Jupiter this morning 2010-06-25 at 5:34:15 ET, 15 minutes before Europa crosses the central meridian. 

Jupiter in the morning of 2010-06-23.  The GRS is about to transit the CM.  this was the last image but it has some indications of ringing.  This ringing problem becomes evidenced at a frame rate of 60.  The DMK works best if the frame rate is less than 60. 

Had another chance to image this morning.  Jupiter, this time with Io approaching on the right. 

We had an outreach event Saturday evening, so I did not make it up to image on Sunday morning, but today was alright.  We had a little ground fog, but the seeing and transparency were OK.  Here the first image I took this morning.  Subsequent images got worse as the sun started to rise.  Io is starting its transit at the following limb as its shadow is appraoching the GRS.

Imaged Jupiter this morning.  Transparancy was variable as a layer of thin high clouds kept moving through.  The SEB can faintly be seen but is distinct in the green and blue images.  Io is just getting ready to finish its transit just below the GRS at the edge of the planetary disc.

It has been 2 weeks since I had time to do some imaging again.  Here an image of Saturn from last night May 23.  Conditions were variable and I made three runs with various barlows.  Here the image with the WO 2x barlow screwed on the nose piece of the camera which makes it approx. a F 13.  I did not push the image very hard so it is a little soft.

Have been busy with outreach and other stuff so did finally make time to process an image of Saturn from the evening of May 9th.  Don’t seem to get the processing right yet this year. 

This is kind of the “First Image” on the new pier.  Made the image in two versions Tuesday evening. The first one an RGB, the second an IRGB with the IR as luminance.  It was pretty humid and was only able to get this one image from Saturn before the dew started palying a role.