The Dutch Observatory

June 30, 2009 on 7:02 am | In Uncategorized | Comments Off

On May 8th 2009 Anthony Wesley in Australia captured the Gallilean Moon Europa eclipse the moon Ganymede.  To my knowledge this was the first time an amateur captured the complete occultation of two Gallilean moons in an animation.  My attempts to do the same since than have been hindered by weather conditions on the dates that such event was visible from my location, until this morning.  Here my capture of Ganymede (front and larger) partially occulting Europa, while Io is visible at the right starting to make its turn at the end of its orbit.  Not as good as Anthony’s, but I am happy with the result and waiting for another opportunity.  The sequence consists of 14 images between 6:49 UT and 7:21 UT.  Each image contains approx. 250 out of 500 frames 1/11 sec each stacked in Registax 5 and post processed in Photoshop. Seeing was variable during the capture series and probably peeked at average.  Click the image to activate the animation.