Latest observations added at the top.
Images taken with 5inch or 6inch APO refractor or 12inch CDK or 13inch Newtonian
Recording with DMK41 or ZWO120MC with FireCapture. Processing in AstroStakkert!2, Registax 6 and Photoshop CS2.
2019-08-19 03:42UT & 03:57UT. The Jupiter ephemeris predicted a nice central passage of the Great Red Spot and two Moons positioned near the planet for tonight. Io on the left and Ganymede on the right. So I planned to take some images. Very quickly once the scope was set up it became clear that the seeing was quite bad. Jupiter was jumping around badly. Still I captured some AVI sequences for processing. Compare the resulting image with 2019-06-05! Also compare the size. Jupiter's diameter is just a bit smaller. We are clearly past the opposition. On the same evening I also recorded Saturn. Seeing was not any better, but it is the first Saturn recording of this season so I wanted to keep it.
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2019-07-05 05:50UT & 05:34UT. An interesting comparison between the 130mm APO and a new 70mm scope (TS Photoline 70mm). Seeing was better than on July-02 so that even with 130mm aperture more details were visible than with 160mm. For both scopes the same barlow & camera combination and very similar recording / processing settings were used. The 70mm shows nice detail that can be verified in the 130mm image. Unfortunately the Red Spot was not visible. The Moon left of Jupiter is Io.
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2019-07-02 05:18UT. The seeing was quite variable this evening. Compare the image with 2019-06-05 using the same optics and camera. Quite a difference in resolution!
2019-06-05 06:40UT. This was a warm day and I expected turbulence in the air when the evening colled. Bun instaed thwe air was quite calm and lots of detail was visible on Jupiter. This time thw 160mm lens was used with the ASI120 color camera.
I again wanted to record a time lapse. Unfortunately there were computer problems interrupting the recording sequence, so there is a little jump in the video.
2019-06-03 06:36UT. This is the first observation of Jupiter this opposition season. The position of the planet is far South so the seeing conditions are quite bad. On this evening the Red Spot was just disappearing behind the limb. However a nice dual Moon event was going on. Io and its shadow were crossing the planet's cloud deck and Callisto was passing nearby.
During about 50min. 45 individual AVIs were recorded an processed into frames and an animation. There were not enough frames for a long video so a loop of forward and backward rotation was created.