GIF animation of Io's transit of the GRS - 9 Jan 2024

[geoflewis]

I was meant to be on crutches by now, after hip surgery, which didn't happen, so I tried to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity to capture Io's transit of the GRS late on the afternoon of 9 January. It was very windy, very cold and the seeing was awful with Jupiter at only ~40° elevation, sitting above centrally heated rooftops. With Jupiter trashing about on screen from the combination of poor seeing and wind, it was impossible to determine best focus by the time the event started, so just went with what I had....

 

I managed to commence the sequence just as Io started to cross the GRS, until the GRS disappeared out of view. I didn't spend a lot of time with the post processing, as the poor quality of the data doesn't warrant it. The elapsed time is just under half an hour.

I set the GIF to play both forward and backwards with a pause at each end, so whilst no fine detail is visible, hopefully, it will be interesting for those that didn't get to observe the event.

Thanks for looking.

Edited January 9 by geoflewis
replaced GIf with the fwd & back version

[Kon]

Very nice record of the event. Unfortunately, that bit of Jetstream above us is killing the seeing even at higher elevation.

[geoflewis]

2 minutes ago, Kon said:

Very nice record of the event. Unfortunately, that bit of Jetstream above us is killing the seeing even at higher elevation.

Thanks Kostas, it was fun trying, but the conditions were dreadful. I wouldn't have kept going in those conditions usually, but it was an interesting event to observe.

[Space Cowboy]

Nice animation Geof! I could see the stars flickering away last night. Always good to see a moon transit whatever the conditions 👍

[geoflewis]

Thanks Stuart,

It was fun watching Io actually pass over the GRS, just a pity it was so close to the limb and in awful seeing.

[Space Cowboy]

10 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Stuart,

It was fun watching Io actually pass over the GRS, just a pity it was so close to the limb and in awful seeing.

I believe seeing a GRS moon transit in good seeing is as rare as seeing a unicorn with hen's teeth 🙂

Edited January 11 by Space Cowboy

[Denys]

Nice capture! Do you mind if I ask how you created this animation? Specifically, do you record a series of short videos? If so, what is the duration of each video, and do you set a specific interval between each capture?

Thanks in advance!

Denys

[geoflewis]

32 minutes ago, Denys said:

Nice capture! Do you mind if I ask how you created this animation? Specifically, do you record a series of short videos? If so, what is the duration of each video, and do you set a specific interval between each capture?

Thanks in advance!

Denys

Thanks Denys. I ran a sequence of 25x1m videos with a 10s interval between each (though it doesn't need any interval), which I batch processed through AS3! and Astrosurface to produce 25 Tiff images. These were then taken into PIPP to produce the GIF animation.

[bosun21]

Nice animation Geof. I abandoned my Tuesday session due to the wind on my new dobsonian. Once I have come to grips with the processing properly I’ll need to try a few animations.

[orion25]

I love your animations, Geof. Please, take good care of yourself

Regards,

Reggie