A clear sky at last, and another attempt to get a good image of Jupiter.

This is probably the best one; the seeing was maybe not quite as good as last time, it’s hard to know as I’m still learning how to process these images.
They are taken from a short video; in this case, each is from the best 40% of 3000 images, each about 10ms exposure. These are stacked, then processed (in this case using an unsharp mask). There’s a bit of extra processing to improve the colour.
I have now (22 December) set up waveSharp, which has the wavelets element from RegiStax, and repeated the processing using wavelets instead of the unsharp mask. This has improved the sharpening; the image is here, and also now as the featured image for this post. It does make Ganymede look a bit green though!

I used an eyepiece to have a quick look at Jupiter as well, but to be honest I hadn’t noticed the shadow of Io! It shows just how bad the seeing is in Edinburgh, very often. It can be hard to pick up the best bits by eye, and the software (AutoStakkert) does an excellent job. The moon to the left of Jupiter is Ganymede; the moon Io itself is also in the image, in front of Jupiter, but can’t really be seen as it’s close in colour and brightness to Jupiter, and the images are not that good. However the sequence of images over about 25 minutes shows the movement of the shadow, as well as that of Ganymede and features in the cloud belts of Jupiter.





I am pretty pleased with these; the camera (a ZWO ASI 715MC) works really well. I still have a lot to learn, but am more than impressed with what can be achieved with my small telescope.