Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

I got up at 3:AM to get a shot of Jupiter while it was transiting and the seeing was good to moderate. This image came out a bit cleaner than the previous one, however no moons were in the field of view nor was the red spot aimed our way as in the previous image. As before I used the UV filter for the Luminance channel along with the standard Red, Green and Blue filters. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Jupiter at ~3:30AM 8-18-2022 (PCT)

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Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Here is the type of shot I want to get when Jupiter is high in the sky. Unfortunately, this one was when Jupiter was low in the sky (~17 degrees above the horizon), but the timing of Io and the red spot where good. The atmosphere at this low elevation really destroys the detail but the eclipse was captured. This was at around 11:20 PM on 8/15/2022 PCT. I did however get a slightly better shot of Saturn than my previous version an hour later.

Eclipse on Jupiter

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Saturn

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Chris F. Loc: San Francisco

Wow, very cool!

Chris

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Chris
Thanks for checking out the planetary images and for the comment.

IreneAC Loc: San Diego

Nice photos.

I don't comment here often, but I always enjoy looking at the photos
in the Astronomy forum. 🪐🌠🔭

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi IreneAC
Thanks for viewing the planetary images and for the comment. I glad you liked them.

DougS Loc: Central Arkansas

Impressive shots! Saturn is sure a beauty...

swsands Loc: Alton IL

Awesome images Ballard!! Would you please tell us what equipment and processes you used to capture these?

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi DougS
Thanks for checking out the planetary images and for the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi swsands

Hi swsands
Thanks for viewing the images of Jupiter and Saturn and for the comment. Below is a list of the equipment and the processes used.
Hardware
Telescope - Meade LX200 16 inch Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (F10 for 4096 mm focal Length).
Mount - Astro-Physics 1600GTO with Hi Res Shaft encoders. (uses a Astro Physics version 4 GTO controller)
Camera - QHY 290M (2.9 micron Pixel size) with a 5 position Starlight express Filter wheel (USB 3 connections).
Filters used - Lumicon 370 nanometer UV filter (used for Luminance as I found this gave a sharper image than the Luminance filter. Also used Red, Green and Blue Optolong filters.
Focuser is an OPTEC TCF Leo for fine focusing.
Lenovo Think Pad Laptop to control everything
5 port Gigabit Ethernet switch to connect the Mount and Focuser to the Laptop and remote the laptop interface to my desktop. This allows me to run everything from my desktop and not get eaten by mosquitoes.


Software used

Astro-Physics Command Center Pro along with appropriate ASCOM drivers for interfaces to all the devices.
SKY-X Serious Astronomer Edition for initial positioning of the telescope and to plan the imaging session (e.g. were are the moons of the planets the height above the horizon, transit time, etc).
FireCapture for camera and filter wheel control also records the timing of the images for later derotation of the images. (FreeWare program).
Image processing
AutoStakkert (FreeWare program) for stacking the .ser video files captured with Firecapture.
WinJUPOS (FreeWare program) to derotate the planet images and combine the LRGB images (For Jupiter each video is 60 seconds long and so it takes at least 4 minutes for each image and Jupiter rotates so fast that it is necessary to derotate the image for alignment to keep the image from bluring due to the rotation. Same with Saturn it is just not quite as fast.
Pixinsight is used for sharpening, denoise tweaking the image color.
Picture window Pro version 7 is used for some minor cleanup and conversion to Jpegs.

I'm still learning how to do this stuff but getting better. My newest experiment with the UV in place of Luminance was my latest learning experience.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Note: Some of the equipment techniques and software used are different for my deep sky images.

I recently set up a website where I post many of my astronomical and other shots (Still a work in progress and I plan to add documentation to images haven't done so yet) Feel free to check it out at
https://ballardbare.smugmug.com/
You can download any of the images there (The site provider has an option to have prints made, I haven't tried that service yet since it cost money and usually just print the images I want myself). If you have any suggestions for the site let me know.

Chris F. Loc: San Francisco

For sure and Grass Valley and Nevada City are such great towns .

Take Care,
Chris

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Chris
Thanks for the comment, indeed Grass Valley and Nevada City and nice area's can still see the Milky Way at night (and the glow from Sacramento).

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Excellent!

When I show a group of people Jupiter and its moons they kinda shrug their shoulders and go back to looking at their cell phones. When I show them Saturn there is instant interest and all shorts of comments.

bwa

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi bwa
Thanks for checking out the images and for the comment. The features on Jupiter are subtle and not that impressive visually, but Saturn's rings always standout. Many people I have showed Saturn say it doesn't even look real.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Oops. I made a slight mistake. Io's shadow had already left Jupiter, this was the Shadow of Ganymede. The sunlight was coming more from the right-hand side of this photo since the image had Jupiter's south pole on top. Below is the corrected version

Labels corrected.

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