The Dutch Observatory

Jupiter on November 7th.  The weater continues with bright skies and average/above average  seeing.  Tonight I ran three series with different gamma settings, one at 100, one at 70 and one at 60.  The last image out did the two others.  The Oval BA shows very pale.  Lots of activity in the NEB and NTC.  It won’t be long and Jupiter will have moved behind the tree line at my home, so any other images of this apparation will have to come from Charlie Elliott.

The weather keeps being kind to us.  Although the seeing and transparency are not 100%, the conditions are 100% better in the last few says than they have been in a long time.  Anyone can tell me if the yellowish area over Isidis Region and Aetheria are dust or clouds, or maybe nothing?  Here 4 of the 5 images I ran this morning. 

Had to make use of the clear skies and image Jupiter.  Here Jupiter on November 6th.

Adding another day to our streak of nice days.  November 6th I made a series of 3 images of which I am posting the RGB and individual filtered images. 

Tonight Jupiter’s moons would be subject to another mutual event and my intentions were to try to capture some “bigger” moons this time.  The moon Io would be occulted by Europa with a total relative intensity drop of 40%.  Altough it was clear, the weather was pretty bad for observing and imaging with the image blowing all over the chip.  I did not realize that Io was not visible to start with, because it was in Jupiter’s shadow.  So I was questioning myself if the event would take place.  I started recording anyway, because I was setup .  To my big surprise, Io all of a sudden started shining a few minutes before the event and I did complete observing and recording the event despite the bad seeing.  After the fact, it would have been better to image this at f/15 rather than f/30 so the images would have been less blurry.  But I was happy to have observed and imaged my 4th mutual event this apparation!  Click the image to activate the animation!

The clear Skies continued, but the seeing was not good, with winds picking up, making Mars jump all over the chip.  Here the only presentable image from this morning. 

The sky was clear again, and I am taking every opportunity to image.  Here is Jupiter with Io transitting the CM just before Jupiter disappeared in the trees to the West. 

Here in Georgia we are in a period of clear skies and relative good transparency.  However the seeing could be a lot better.  Got up this morning for Mars and here my first image of this morning. In subsequent images Mars was jumping around quite a bit.  The cloud cover South of Utopia seems much less than on previous days and the polar cap visible in all filtered images. 

The nice weater continued and conditions to observe Jupiter were great!  I made 5 images of which this one is the first.  I also did some more testing with the sample ratio for my imaging.  Most images I make are made with the Williams Optics 2x barlow used in binos, which result in an f-ratio or f/15.  Using the Celestron 2x shorty plus with my extension tubes allows me to go up to f/30, but at a far increased exposure time and the result is not as nice.  This image shows the GRS just sliding off the side and Ganymede getting ready to disappear behind the planetary disk.

The forecast was clear for early this morning and the rest of the day, but clouds have moved in.  However, it left me an opportunity earlier this morning to capture Mars. (Now an hour earlier since we switched to daylight savings time yesterday).  Here Mars and Syrtis Major, with Hellas very bright above it and the polar cap visible below it.   Deucallonis Regio shows up bright also above the dark Sinus Sabeaus to the right of Syrtis Major.  I am not sure if the dark area below Syrtis Major is Boreo Syrtis.