Submitted by: millers18@att.net [28 Jul 05]
The southern California skies have been cloudy lately, but on Friday July 22nd they cleared just a little. Temperatures had been well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit all week. Huge cumulonimbus clouds were piling up in the mountains to the east, but Jupiter was in the south western sky where it was clear, so I decided to set up the ETX 125 and the LPI and try to image Jupiter. I got an aluminum folding table for my birthday from my friend and neighbor Tim, and that made the session much more enjoyable... we set the laptop on the table and we were able to achieve focus without contorting our necks into bizarre positions in order to see the image on the screen. The seeing was not very good due to the heat and humidity and atmospheric turbulence. But the end result is reasonably close to what I see when I look at Jupiter with an ETX and a moderately powerful eyepiece. The attached photo is a rather complex composite. (I'm surprised how much I've learned about Photoshop since I got my ETX's.) Stats are as follows: The base image is composed of approximately 40 stacked images (quality set at 60%) and was overexposed in order to capture three of Jupiter's moons. In the base image Jupiter was just a featureless white ball. We copied and pasted a better image of Jupiter that was composed of approximately 35 stacked images (quality set at 80%) on top of the overexposed image. The digital noise was removed manually. Composite image was created using Adobe Photoshop.
Submitted by: Bruce Pipes (bevnbruce@comcast.net) [14 Jul 05]
Attached is a movie showing Jupiter on June 18, 2005 between 10 pm and 11 pm EDT. The Great Red Spot rotates into view; the shadow of Io moves across the surface; and Ganymede appears from behind the planet. The particulars for each frame of the movie are the following: Telescope: ETX-125 Photo method: afocal Eyepiece: Meade 4mm Plssl Camera: Canon S110 in movie mode (640X480 pixels, 20 fps) attached with Scopetronix Digi-T Processing: approximately 275 frames stacked with Keith's Image Stacker and processed with unsharp mask, wavelet shrinkage denoise and level adjust. Brightness and contrast further adjusted in Photoshop Elements.
Click image to view movie in a new window
Submitted by: stevedang@gmail.com [11 Jul 05]
first got my etx in jan this year. Took this picture on Wednesday, June 22, 2005, 10:31:37. Unfortunately it was only a single picture. Hope to get more soon. jupiter was 43.46 arc sec. Test1.bmp combined rgb images of jupiter at ~ f40 with gaussian blur applied. ETX 105. DSI mounted at prime focal. with 2x barlow on meade variable camera adapter.
First attempt using registax to bring out more detail. Thank you for such an awesome site.
Submitted by: Francesco Michelangeli (F.MICHELANGELI@bham.ac.uk) [30 Jun 05]
attached is a picture of Jupiter taken on 27th June 2005 using a ETX70 with x3 barlow and the Meade LPI (exposure 0.066sec for about 50 stacked images). I think you can see the Great Red Spot on top right cloud band. Image was tinkered with for brightness and contrast with paint shop pro. It's amazing what detail can be gained even with such a small scope. Will be trying other targets soon.
Submitted by: Co1dSp1d3R@aol.com [22 Jun 05]
Here is a picture of jupiter i took with my etx 90. Also using the lpi with the quality set to 90%. think it was about 140 images stacked using the lpi program. Think this is my best one yet as it is the first one where the great red spot can just about be seen
Submitted by: Ryan Andrews (randrews@netwalk.com) [18 Jun 05]
To get over the tree line across the street, I shot this out the master bathroom window on the second floor of the house. :) Clouds were moving in and out, but I wanted to see if I could get Venus in a photo.
Submitted by: C.A.Warburton (C.A.Warburton@lboro.ac.uk) [10 Jun 05]
Just thought I'd send you another shot of Jupiter that I've taken recently. Slightly better than my last due to more stable seeing. This is a stack of 852 frames from 1162 at 352 x 288 pixels resized x 200%. Taken with a Vesta webcam, 2x Apo Barlow and Etx-90 using my home grown equatorial wedge from my back yard in Derbyshire U.K. Of interest is IO and Europa just visible to the lower right of the shot. These I've enhanced and enlarged and sent as a separate Attachment.
Submitted by: chasiotis elias (elias_chasiotis@stendor.coo.gr) [10 Jun 05]
Submitted by: Paul Campbell (iamzoup@yahoo.com) [7 Jun 05]
Hi All. Here is the last photo of Saturn untill next fall. Avi of 2min. at 1/25 of a sec. Taken with a etx 125 and a sac 7 ccd camera hope you enjoy Paul.
Submitted by: chasiotis elias (elias_chasiotis@stendor.coo.gr) [7 Jun 05]
this is my latest image of Mars captured on 2 June 2005. South is at top.
Submitted by: C.A.Warburton@lboro.ac.uk [4 Jun 05]
Just thought I'd send you my latest and first resonably succesful shots of Jupiter. Before I've used my Canon A75 to capture images and video but recently I acquired a second hand Philips webcam ( PCVC675k ) and in conjunction with my laptop, ETX-90EC and an home made ( and only roughly aligned )equatorial wedge, set about capturing some video of Jupiter. The air was very unsteady after a warm day and Jupiter was over several rooftops as viewed from my back yard here in Derbyshire UK. For a first attempt with the webcam, though I decided to persevere. With the camera set at 320x240 and a shutter speed of 1/50th I captured several streams of AVI with and without my Celestron APO 2x Barlow. The resulting videos I stacked and processed in Registax. The larger shot was taken with 2x Barlow and was a stack of 226 frames from a steam of 570frames. The smaller was without barlow and was a stack of 300 frames from 677. The final images, though not as good as some I've seen in your galleries, are better than my previous shots. Also of interest and something I only noticed after processing the images is the distinct rotation of Jupiter. There's an obvious cloud belt feature that has moved in the two images that were taken probably no more than an hour apart. So I hope you can post them on your phenomenal site.