Jupiter shadow transit, 18" Starmaster

Hi all,

Caught Europas shadow transit last night at around 10:30 EST, the seeing was still only slightly better than average but there were some good moments so what the hell I thought. It was cold, about -13 C, I used a Toucam, 5X's powermate, set the framerate to 5fps, 640x480 uncompressed.
about 10% gain, 20% gamma, 50% bright, full saturation, and 1/33 sec exp. The colour seems kinda washed out perhaps 1/25 would have been better. Unfortunately my computer did'nt like the cold and cut out on me it only came back to life after a while in my warmroom. I used only 100 frames out of 600, and the shadow is still distorted so I'll have to go back and hand pick them, still happy with the image. I used registax 2 and Imagesplus. Scope is a 18" Starmaster with Zambuto primary.

Mike Wirths

Attached Image:

Hi Mike,

Very nice image, good color too .

Have you tried aligning on the shadow , if not then that may improve your shadow .

Thanks,

Wes Higgins

Hi Mike,

Nice image. By aligning on the shadow the software follows the shadow and makes the planet blurrier than it should be. Two minutes is 1 minute too many for Europa and Io shadows. The moons move across the FOV faster than the planet rotates. In my SkyMap Pro software, Io's shadow, for example, moves a whole moon's width in just a little over a minute. Depending on the image scale, you could record up to 2~4 minutes of Jupiter by itself - without the moons around.

Best,

Jose Suro
Tierra Verde, Florida