ASI224MC "swansong" - Jove & Mars, the good & the ugly-another animation added!

[Kokatha man]

EDIT: I have added another longer animation of Jove in this post from the last night at Carrieton, which I've just finished...thanks to the very generous file-size allowances of SGL..!

Well, the "swansong" refers to the fact that we were expecting the ASI290MM by now but there's been a bit of a delay there...but this last trip to Carrieton looks like the last where we'll be using the colour cam in the foreseeable future...

Tbh  Jupiter (the low planet for us atm) won't be around for much longer & whilst the ADC has been a boon with the ASI224MC, it is very difficult getting the ADC *PLUS* camera etc orientated for perpendicular up & down handcontroller operation - not worrying about this will mean we can much more easily use FireCapture's autoguide function, which we find very nice!  

... the ugliest part was the enormous amount of dust blowing in from the North at Carrieton these last 5 days...I had to wash the corrector after the 2nd night (made easier by the neoprene seal I installed under it sometime back) & I had to do a major clean of the EQ8 head in situ...now we're home I'll put it on the bench & check the worm drives with a fine tooth comb & (hopefully!) "not" have to clean & regrease them - along with the late Autumn final flurry of the Oz bushfly it was diabolical...fortunately we were up mostly in the night-time so we didn't notice the worst of the daytime...  

As I commented over on CN a few days back, I previously thought that any Jovian moon on the disk was something to make me leave WinJupos compilations alone in such situations...I now think this is only a problem with shadows...Ganymede responded in a perfectly well-behaved manner in processing: I've noted a few "tricks" to help alignment more accurately - which I'll update the tute with sometime soon...  

Seeing was both good & annoying - we had to "surf" the seeing & make quick adjustments to the focus in the scintillas of moments that the image came into semi-focus...this constant toing-&-froing of the seeing conditions put the kybosh on anything really nice on all nights...& Saturn unfortunately gave us no satisfaction whatsoever with the seeing & image-outcomes, even in iR..!  

Probably the highlight was discovering WJ wasn't perturbed by Ganymede coming onto Jove's disk - here's an animation of several frames, one composed entirely from the others to fill in a "jump" in the spacing...displaying WJ's aptitude therein...  

I'll try to get the "good animation" remade & posted on my website asap - another little "ugly disaster" whilst processing was not remembering to "save" constantly - I lost the complete animation processing after making a couple of test .gifs - I should have saved the .psd when I'd nearly finished it...idiot me! ...this animation is actually made from screenshots taken from said .gifs which needed some more adjustments - but I'd lost the "master" file by then..!  

Anyway, Ganymede comes up well with the Osiris crater seemingly well-portrayed...

I've put a "classic" 3 minute capture as well as a WinJupos compilation of the "still" images to compare the results...& also demonstrate WJ's facility with a moon on Jove's disk.

We also shot some iR filter (including a red filter) recordings using Baader bandpass filters on the last night...the ability of the ASI224MC has been especially good for an OSC here, particularly with Uranus & Neptune last apparitions!

On the final night the onscreen feed looked pretty good for Jove...but the outcome less than desired...the many aspects to seeing means nothing is certain until the image comes out the can...

The Mars images were a bit frustrating - the seeing was never good enough for nice, sharp focusing on the darker features but still came up half-reasonable...the 3rd image actually pretty poor due to said seeing but I'm including it because  despite its failings, somehow that swirling cloud mass in the Hellas/South Polar regions came up very nicely...the vagaries of seeing, captures, image-processing & outcomes..!  

[Pete Presland]

An excellent Mars image with opposition just around the corner. The Jupiter animation is stunning, I just love the way Ganymede changes in appearance as it transits. Simply superb!

[symesie04]

fantastic images

[Kokatha man]

4 minutes ago, bunnygod1 said:

...I just love the way Ganymede changes in appearance as it transits. Simply superb!

Yes, this is a contrast phenomenon Pete, where Ganymede appears to darken as it encroaches onto the bright background of Jove!

ps: I wish I'd saved as I went along as everyone knows you should...losing the .psd when I still had a few more steps to go meant taking screenshots of one of the "trial" .gif subs I had made (& saved) to make this animation - screenshot-resurrection isn't the way to go -but I had no other option with all the data we were processing - I'll wait until I recover before attempting another one from scratch with the proper files!

[Kokatha man]

...playing around too much with something fashioned from screenshots is a bit silly but I think it *might* look  a tad better not so bright - "how did I lose the file in the first place?" - I clicked on something & the file closed...I don't know whether I then clicked on "No" or "Cancel" when that window appeared - but it went, never to return..!  

I will remake it down the track - but for now I've received the tracking number & Sam tells me the ASI290MM is on its way!

[Mick J]

Chatty this morning Darryl,  great posts and wonderful pictures, many thanks.

[PeterCPC]

Lovely images.

Peter

[laudropb]

Terrific images and lovely animation. Great detail throughout.

[Debo]

Wow those Mars images are superb.

[Grotemobile]

I will second that about the Mars images. Really amazing.

[DrRobin]

Wow, Jupiter is about as good as I have seen, but Mars, that is something else.  Thanks once again for setting the bar beyond my reach, both are spectacular.

Robin

[Kokatha man]

Thanks to everyone who has replied, Pat & I appreciate the generous comments!

 

I have added another longer Jovian animation at the bottom of the first post here, this one from the last night at Carrieton.  

[Space Cowboy]

 Cracking Jupiter animation Darryl with awesome moon action! Mars is excellent too! 

Good grief is the 224mc obsolete already? Will the new wonder camera produce pin sharp Mars and Saturn images at sub 20 degrees???? ;-)

[neil phillips]

Having a lot of fun out there Darryl. Be interesting to see what the new camera does. Will feel weird using RGB again after the ease of the 224

Especially colour animations. Considering the conditions you talk about. Quality images.

[si@nite]

A great set there Darryl, lovely detail on Ganymede almost 3d like, look forward to seeing how the new cam performs, pointless us in the uk throwing any more dosh at new cameras, considering the low elevation of the planets for the foreseeable!.

[Kokatha man]

Thanks also you fellas!

Stuart, Neil, Simon - I definitely wouldn't say the ASI224MC is obsolete, not by a long shot...as you'd appreciate a colour cam provides opportunities at times when a mono doesn't, but for the "bigger picture" of iR imaging & especially for Uranus & Neptune, we would expect some clear advantages using a mono in clear skies...

We were actually intending to use the ASI174MM just to get back "into the groove" with mono capturing but felt the colour cam should have one last outing...especially wrt to using the ADC on Jupiter which only gets to 49° down here - & which for you folks is an important consideration...& this is much simpler with the colour cams...

Because of the even smaller pixels in the ASI290MM sensor (approx. 1.3X the image scale of the ASI224MC's) the ADC in the image train looks a bit unwieldy/problematic...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Cracking images as ever!

[CATLUC]

Hello

A real pleasure to see your images.

Thank for sharing.

Clear skies.

Luc