This has been a wet and very cloudy few months. I don't think we've had more than a dozen really good nights since February - tons of clouds and an abundance of rain. And it has been a terrible tease to boot - I have on more than one occasion this spring trotted out the equipment only to have clouds move in within 30 minutes of setting up. But as June drew to a close the weather relented just enough to convince me to bring out the 6" Criterion and check in on Jupiter - king of the planets that came to opposition a couple weeks ago.
Jupiter is always interesting with the cloud bands, satellite phenomena, and of course Great Red Spot. But right now we have a couple of interesting developments going on that are further motivation to spend some time observing him. First, as reported in many places such as Sky and Telescope's June 2019 edition, the equatorial band is noticeably darker. According to the article this represents a clearing of the high, white ammonia cloud deck that normally resides in this wide swath of the planet. Furthermore, scientists have recently recognized that there seems to be a pattern to this - the clouds dissipating every 6-7 years and reforming after about a year.
The first night was the old Lucy (the weather) pulling the football from Charlie Brown (me). The seeing was pretty unsteady and then batches of clouds started rolling in like waves at the beach. I doggedly tried to capture some video, hitting the pause button when clouds dimmed Jove and resuming when he peeked out again. But I pretty much captured garbage and ended up really frustrated. Not throw the golf clubs into the water hazard frustrated but still muttering about the $%^# clouds.
The next night seemed better, certainly far less risk of an aborted session due to intruding clouds. But the seeing looked to be marginal as the front worked its way across the mid-Atlantic. While it wasn't the most stable view it was reasonable - I could see right away that the equatorial zone was indeed not the usual white zone but a very light tan. (For comparison see my 2016 posting with a shot of Jupiter). As an added bonus the GRS was just visible as it set on the preceding limb.
The Great Red Spot, while not positioned well on the evening of the 23rd, is the other big story. We have seen it shrinking over the last couple of decades, and now we are getting reports and images showing pieces of it being "torn off" and trailing away. It is so iconic as a part of Jupiter - I really hope that we are not witnessing its demise.
Jupiter is always interesting with the cloud bands, satellite phenomena, and of course Great Red Spot. But right now we have a couple of interesting developments going on that are further motivation to spend some time observing him. First, as reported in many places such as Sky and Telescope's June 2019 edition, the equatorial band is noticeably darker. According to the article this represents a clearing of the high, white ammonia cloud deck that normally resides in this wide swath of the planet. Furthermore, scientists have recently recognized that there seems to be a pattern to this - the clouds dissipating every 6-7 years and reforming after about a year.
The first night was the old Lucy (the weather) pulling the football from Charlie Brown (me). The seeing was pretty unsteady and then batches of clouds started rolling in like waves at the beach. I doggedly tried to capture some video, hitting the pause button when clouds dimmed Jove and resuming when he peeked out again. But I pretty much captured garbage and ended up really frustrated. Not throw the golf clubs into the water hazard frustrated but still muttering about the $%^# clouds.
The next night seemed better, certainly far less risk of an aborted session due to intruding clouds. But the seeing looked to be marginal as the front worked its way across the mid-Atlantic. While it wasn't the most stable view it was reasonable - I could see right away that the equatorial zone was indeed not the usual white zone but a very light tan. (For comparison see my 2016 posting with a shot of Jupiter). As an added bonus the GRS was just visible as it set on the preceding limb.
The Great Red Spot, while not positioned well on the evening of the 23rd, is the other big story. We have seen it shrinking over the last couple of decades, and now we are getting reports and images showing pieces of it being "torn off" and trailing away. It is so iconic as a part of Jupiter - I really hope that we are not witnessing its demise.
The next evening was the best of the three in terms of seeing, and Jupiter presented multiple cloud bands and a clearly muddled equatorial zone. Io also hovered nearby and was caught up in the video frames.
By now I was also getting more comfortable with FireCapture - new software that seems to do a better job of capturing video than the IC Capture that came with the Imaging Source camera. I also have begun exploring the PIPP (Planetary Imaging PreProcessor) application. Pretty pleased with the resulting image below which was captured using FireCapture, run through PIPP, and then post processing filters applied using Registax 6.
It's hard to keep abreast of the new tools and techniques that enable amateur astronomers with modest equipment to capture images that they could only dream of 25 years ago!
By now I was also getting more comfortable with FireCapture - new software that seems to do a better job of capturing video than the IC Capture that came with the Imaging Source camera. I also have begun exploring the PIPP (Planetary Imaging PreProcessor) application. Pretty pleased with the resulting image below which was captured using FireCapture, run through PIPP, and then post processing filters applied using Registax 6.
It's hard to keep abreast of the new tools and techniques that enable amateur astronomers with modest equipment to capture images that they could only dream of 25 years ago!
