21.8.19

It's the morning after Jupiter Tuesday!

*

Wednesday: After a frustrating day trying to capture the sun between endless cloud [yesterday] I went over after dark to collect the laptop and to tidy up. Jupiter was just visible in the south just above the ridge of the house. Nothing else for it but to start everything up again and home in on Jupiter. Not forgetting to remove the usual solar filters just to be able to see anything at all. Solar has become my normal interest. So off came the solar prism and on went the star diagonal. The 90mm Vixen was well out of reach so I added the ZWO camera to the 7" refractor. 

Just as expected Jupiter was a total mess! Boiling and soft and only the slightest hint of a belt and a spot. I captured a number of 1000 frame videos. Then ran one through Registax. The result was as at least awful as I had imagined it would be. Nothing I tried would improve the final image.

As usual, all of this is still on the laptop, so I will have to post from the laptop once I set up for more solar work in the dome. SharpCap has had an update to 3.2! It is lucky I have a fast wireless connection in the observatory now. This was thanks to moving the laptop out of the radio shadow of the mounting and telescopes.

Today, Wednesday, I was hoping for some solar, H-alpha imagery but the cloud soon became impossible. There was even a sprinkle of rain.  

Unfortunately the rippled mask is still there. I used the enlarging button to increase the live, image size to 300% and found the mask had become a checkered pattern. How a rippled mask can become a checkered pattern by enlargement is beyond my limited knowledge. I may be forced to change to another capture software after all.


Click on any image for an enlargement.
*

No comments: