Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Jupiter 3rd May 2006


I thought the seeing was going to be good last night because I was imaging the Moon earlier and I was getting some patches of good seeing. But Jupiter is still very low in the sky, and there was a great deal of turbulence, the disc was wobbling like a jelly.
The top image is in B&W, and the lower colour. I say colour, although I'm having problems getting the correct colour because they are so subtle. Plus I have to use an orange of yellow filter to bring out any detail. Managed to capture Ganymede and Io though, the gamma setting had to be raised to about 60% to pick them up.
Not much to see on Jupiter's disc, the GRS is around the back :-(
These were taken with a Barlow lens attached to the Toucam. I unscrewed my 2 x Celestron lens from the Barlow tube and screwed it directly onto the Toucam. It produces a nice sized disc with more contrast. When I attach a filter and then the Barlow lens, it magnifies even more.
If I use the Barlow lens as per normal, the image (in these seeing conditions) seems lacking in contrast and detail.