Jupiter, Mars...

[Kokatha man]

Somewhat bizarre seeing for the Jovian images earlier in the night...focus was swinging wildly between AND within each capture, up to 400 micron shifts on the Moonlite between captures. Focusing itself was pretty demanding regardless, due to the unstable onscreen images...

When I finally appreciated the magnitude of the focus variations it became clear that we should have been focusing "on the fly" during captures - not the sort of conditions I really want to image in but when I finally decided this approach was imperative I had Pat give me 15 second readouts during each capture for me to take as the cue to refocus for optimum sharpness...this was only with the last 3 captures in iR610nm - especially for the last 2 of these avi's - the first of this bracket of 3 I only refocused a couple of times during the capture, but for the last 2 had Pat give me those time cues...you can see this appreciable increase in sharpness between frame #1 & the next couple if you study the iR animation closely!

Despite these conditions we were reasonably satisfied with the outcomes...the iR610 images show nice disk detail including quite a bit of turbulence within the SEB...I also think we could have pulled an appreciably better RGB outcome if we had been focusing on the fly during those captures...but "if wishes were fishes..."  

Mars looked great when we collimated, focused & started the first capture a few hours later - but very soon into the first capture the onscreen image began to "blink" & we looked up to see a flotilla of clouds surrounding the planet, the vanguard of a full-on cloud blanket rapidly engulfing the entire sky..!  

Only managed about 2/3 the number of frames that we'd normally capture per avi for this sole avi...but it turned out quite well regardless!

[PeterCPC]

Really lovely images.

Peter

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Lovely images

[theo]

I love the Mars image Darryl. Those Joves aren't too bad either considering the troublesome seeing.  

Pete.

[Grotemobile]

Very good images. Mars is on its way.

Steve.

[Pete Presland]

Very nice set of images,  and an excellent imaging report. 

[laudropb]

Lovely images. I especially like the detail captured on Mars. Amazing considering the conditions.

[Space Cowboy]

Outstanding Mars Darryl!

[Twiggles]

Amazing images!