Wednesday, November 6, 2013

First time Jupiter!

I awoke at 4:30 this morning specifically to observe Comet ISON, currently cruising through the constellation Virgo as it nosedives toward the Sun.  As comets go it was not that remarkable but I wanted to see it prior to it's close encounter with El Sol on November 26th.  Once I finished obseving I was not going to go back to sleep so I tried my hand at imaging Jupiter with the ASI120MC video camera that has been the subject of the past few posts.

The image below is a stack of approximately 900 frames out of 1510 processed in Registax.  The image was captured through my TEC 140 with a 2x Barlow in slightly below average seeing conditions, using the freeware program Firecapture.  Looking at the log file that is automatically generated in Firecapture, I noticed that it provided ephemerides and other information for Jupiter.  While I am not sure the source of these, pertinent data is as follows:

Diameter=41.96"
Magnitude=-2.42
CMI=320.2° CMII=223.8° CMIII=13.5°  (during mid of capture, which was 12:48:36 UT, Nov. 6th)

For a first attempt, I was nearly jumping up and down...of course I needed to stay warm and this helped restore blood flow....but seriously, with more practice (and perhaps a 2.5X Powermate in my future) I believe the images will only get better.  The moon closest to Jupiter is Callisto, and the two moons further out are Europa (upper) and Io (lower).



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