The Jupiter Report

[Guest telescope4u]

The weather report was right for once. Little cloud, finger numbing and frost bitten toes was the forecast and that's what the evening had in store.

Dusk came along at around 6.00pm on the 28/02/2006. The day started wonderfully, with marvellous blue skies and as I delivered items across the country any cloud that had been loitering seemed to evaporate to show the full glorious delight of a late winter day.

As I headed back up north, towards Nottingham, the cloud seemed to build up again, giving 50 - 70% coverage. This seemed like a sign of things to come, and even a bit of snow on the way. A few less than kind words muttered into thin air and if I recall correctly they seemed to question the parenetage of every weather forecaster in the UK.

An afternoon sleep was in order as I had been up since 3am, hopefully the power of dreams would magic any troubling weather away. I was rudely awoken at around 5pm by my daughter trying to stick her finger up my nose, as perhaps she is only 16 month old I think I can forgive her. She will soon learn her own nose is a much more satisfying place the holster ones finger.

The sleep had not wished away any cloud, infact it seem to have summoned more. But not to be put of I decided to set up 2 scopes out to cool down, and with the anticipation of running out and hauling them in from a blizzard.

Tea Consited of pancakes - Well it has to be done.

6.30pm Cloud gone. Eh, what? Yep cloud gone. Not a wisp in the sky. Is this real? Are my eyes deceiving me? What cruel trick and twist of fate do the Cloud Gods hold for me?

Well it seems the Cloud Gods are on a short break and everything is as clear as a Buddhists conscience. So I have two scopes set up, the skies are clear, It's been 10 days since I've last seen anything, what do I do now?

I intially set 2 scopes up 1 for imaging and 1 for observing. A Lx200 8"Gps for a bit of observing and an a LX90 12" LNT for a bit of imagining. But with such clear skies I decided just to observe with both for an hour or two. This was fantastic. The best seeing for around 3 months. Everything was crisp an clear. Saturn showed the Cassini division with a 40mm EP without a problem. Mars Looked like a clear disk even though it's so far away. The Double Cluster seemed to have given birth to a million new stars., as did Pleiades. All the Galaxies where truly clear. Nebula's sprang there smoke existence. The G.O.N. presented itself like a Turner painting. All is well - Except one small issue.....I can not feel my feet and hands.

The phone goes......Ahhhhhhh...A welcome break.....A bit of telescope support....seems a customer needs help to calculate the LNT sensors on a 12".

The warmth was nice, but now my night vision is shot. Time to do some Imagining, me thinks. I used a Toucam II and the Logitech 4000 pro (Which is starting to grow on me). I mainly centered my attention on Saturn, although I did have a quick shift to Mars (which was pointless, as I knew it would be). I spent a couple of hours imagining. By that I mean sat in a Shed with the heater on looking at Registax. Seemed to go OK, I haven't yet fully processed the results.

12.30am 01/03/2006. Time for bed. I'm up in 4 hours to see Jupiter.

Didn't make it to bed, fell asleep on the couch. My internal clock must be spot on because I awoke at 4.25am without an alarm clock.

Went outside. It was cold before but someone seems to have turned the heating down....brrrrrrr......Scopes still whirling away as planned. GOTO Jupiter.......whirl..... Bang on.......WOW. It's been about 3 weeks since I last had a look at the giant, but seeing it again is always a Wow moment.. Jupiter is crystall clear in both scopes. The banding is crisp and GRS is sitting there. I'm in Jupiter heaven. Did about half an hour observing and decided to do some imaging. Now I'm very new to webcam imagining, so this is the first time I've captured Jupiter. Which is definitely a treat for me. I captured 4 one minute AVI's. This is the first processed one.

Well that leads me to here. So I decided to do a report. I called it the Jupiter report as It's mt 1st Jupiter image.

Sorry if I bored you.

Thanks for reading it.

[daz]

Excellent report Damien!!

I can you're pleased you saw Jupiter, and that's a great image! Well Done

Bored? No way, Pedro!!!

[Naz]

Sounds as though you had a good night, rounding of with Jupiter. The final images should be awesome.

Boring, not at all Damien, a joy to read.

nabban

[CELESCOPE]

lovely report there Damian, loved it always nice to have a bit of a story and ones feeling put into words , nice one , just a point , Jupiter is,nt so easy as Saturn can be more rough shall we say imaging saturn , but hope you dont mind , u may already know , but try and keep the the AVIs to about 45 50 secs cus of the rotation , 10 fps has produced my best results , lol not that i,m an expert on the ole Planets

but great start Damian , and i think its our first Jupiter , am i right there

Rog

[MartinB]

Hope you're not delivering today Damien.

Like the sound of that heated shed

Glad your seeing was good cos 20 miles away mine was naff, windy as well.

Nice work with the 1st Jupiter on the forum this year

Martin

[gaelicstorm7]

Nice report Damien, glad you a had a wind free imaging session !

Alan.

[Martin 2]

Really injoyed your report Damien, makes it so interesting and fun, hope your inside warming up now.

Martin 2