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First spot of the Red spot?


oceanheadted

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Just taking a look at jupiter with my C80ED. I have 3 of the moons on the left and one on the right at 17:40pm GMT. I think I can see the red spot just south of the equator (if you were looking at earth it would be described as south) on the left side. Is the is the Red spot

cheers

Alan

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The great red spot is embedded in a hollow in the south equatorial belt - the GRS hollow in fact !. It's never appeared very spot-like to me - more of defined slightly paler area within the SEB. Often the edges of the hollow are a little darker than the suroundings and the leading edge of the hollow has appeared darker as well. There is a moon in transit this evening (Ganymede I think) - it's possible you might have seen that - it was fairly clear when I looked a Jupiter a couple of hours ago.

John

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Alan

I was observing Jupter at 17:00 UT, and the shadow of the moon Ganymede was very clear as a small very dark black spot.

The great red spot was on the CM at 14:37UT, but I feel sure that it must have gone around the limb before your observation.

I could not see it with my 120mm refractor.

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Hi Alan,

I had Jupiter in my Celestron 100 ED yesterday evening and managed to see about 3 cloud belts and also a very prominent 'dark spot' that must have a moon transit.

I've also seen the great red spot and it isn't as defined as perhaps you mention Alan, its more like a 'darker' area of clouds.

I had hoped to view longer until the fog/clouds/dew arrived....:)

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Thanks.

I have just downloaded Stellarium and it's much improved on the version I previously loaded last year. That shows the GRS on it, however it seems the moons don't seem to reflect reality when I looked at Jupiter last night, it shows Ganymede was nowhere near Jupiter at 18:00

cheers

Alan

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Alan - just to clarify - it was the SHADOW of Ganymede that you saw on the surface of Jupiter - had you been stood on Jupiter under the shadow you would have seen an eclipse of the Sun !!

Tonight (13th Dec) the GRS will be visible from around 6pm and will be central around 8pm.

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I was experimenting with imaging Jupiter using AVIs captured from an EOS1000D last night at around 18:00. I just took one of the most exposed AVIs, and stacked it and enhanced in Gimp (using dodge & burn where it looks like Ganymede and its shadow were situated).

The shadow is on the RHS of Jupiter, with Ganymede on the bottom RH corner. This corresponds to what is shown in S&T at that time. Sorry it is such a poor image, this was 115/150 frames, selected automatically by Registax - and I am only just starting to image.

oFlickr Photo Download: Jupiter_93a_gimp

M.

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I took an AVI the previous night (11th at 18:00), at the same time, which I believe shows Europa just at on the RHS of Jupiter, its shadow on the left (this corersponds to S&T) and this red smudge emerged through post-processing. I applied similar technique to last night's image, but nothing specific for the red dot. Is that the red spot?

Flickr Photo Download: Jup_30a_large Gimped

M.

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That's interesting - presumably you use a diagonal? These were with the SPX 8" F6 Newt. I tried imaging with my Onyx ED F6 the previous night (10th) (1st test with extracting video from the EOS live-view stream) and this was how the DSLR saw it

post-17667-133877414886_thumb.jpg

That looks pretty much the same as the Newt to me. I've given up trying to work out shich way round stuff should be - I just keep it as it comes out, apart from Lunar shots which try to keep the way they look with the nakes eye.

This was using a 2" and a 1.25" barlow and a couple of extensions between the DSLR & focuser. The image off the ED80 is great for DSOs & the moon, but very small for planets - but as you say, incredibly sharp, and with a 2x barlow and 15mm eyepiece brings out quite a bit of detail visually with little loss of quality.

Between the two, I prefer the ED80 - and when I can afford it I'd like to swap the Newtonian for a long focal length 5" or 6" refractor for planets.

M.

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Mitch - Yes I was using a diagonal. The left-right up down thing still confuses the hell out of me. I've got a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera where the viewfinder screen is reversed, that does my head in when I use it!

Tried to look out for the GRS last night (13th) , but by the time I got out (during a brief break in the clouds) Jupiter was getting very low and the image was terrible.

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