Jupiter 12/03/2017 Io eclipse

This was my second attempt at imaging a Jovian eclipse. Last time I was thwarted by the weather, this time I was ready! I added my Telvue 2x Barlow lens to the scope which really amplified the image scale. The extra pixels covering Jupiter really added detail. I've owned that Barlow for ages but been too worried it would degrade my images so didn't use it. Now I realise what a decent Barlow can do.

I have actually recorded 3 hours of short videos that I intend to turn into an animation of the event. For now, this is a single stacked still.

I also want to say that Stellarium was not very accurate in predicting the Io eclipse...It showed the event stating about 20 minutes after the actual start.

Telescope and accessories: SW Skymax 150 Mak-Cass F/D = 12 F = 1800mm. Baader fringe killer and Telvue 2x Barlow placed 8-10 cm from the sensor. EQ5pro mount with pillar extension.

Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode, 60fps, ISO 800 Exposure = 1/60s.

Processing: Movie length was around 2 minutes (7200 frames), I use Pipp to extract and decompress the nest 2000 frames. These go into Registax and I select the best 90% of these. I increase the first three wavelets in the Gaussian mode (some trial and error involved here). I remove residual CA using RGB align estimate, The gamma curve is set to a sigmoidal shape to increase contrast and the histogram is stretched to enhance colours.

Image cropped in Gimp.

Note to all...if you have a good quality Barlow hiding away get it in front of your camera!