Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Jupiter, Io & Ganymede

These shouldn't have even been possible--I was working late and went outside to see what the weather was doing. Jupiter was shining brightly through a pretty good-sized sucker hole, so I brought the 6" dob out onto the driveway for a look. When I saw both the GRS and the shadow transit, I hustled out back and opened the roof on the observatory. The sky actually cleared up enough for me to get several streams shot, and these are the best two:


The black dot is Io's shadow on the planet. If you look to the right of it, close to the limb, you can see the moon about to pull away from the planet. I've never actually been able to see the moon in front of the planet like this, so that's pretty cool.


And here we are about half an hour later. Io has cleared the limb while its shadow is still on the planet. That's Ganymede at the bottom, about to pass behind the planet.

Seeing was pretty awful for these, so I'm surprised they processed up as nicely as they did. I do like the SPC900NC vs. the NexImage for sure.

No comments: