Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity

Jupiter is hard to miss in the evening, he's the brightest star in the sky just now. You can see him and his 4 larger moons in a set of binoculars or a small telescope. He is also the first object (after the Moon) I ever saw through a telescope.

Last night after imaging the Moon, I had itchy feet to get some video of Jupiter to play with... In the wee hours of this morning, I sucumbed to temptation...
It's hard to believe how much equipment it takes to image the sky (beyond star-trails/constellations). Think I have just decided on a future blip!
So around 12.30/1 am this morning, I managed to grab some frames of Jupiter. No barlow (like a teleconverter for a lens) used, as there was too much atmospheric turbulance - there's probably only a handful of nights a year when the air is steady enough to use one efficiently. Packed up and into bed, before it was time to get up with the twins!
When I got up, I had a go at stacking in Registax, but this time using the guidelines by one of the developers. What a difference, when you follow instructions on how to use the saftware, rather than pushing and clicking blindly!!!!

The original video lasted for 1m 30s, on a higher resolution image, any longer would show the rotation of the Planet, and blur any fine detail. The file size was around 900Mb! Final image was a stack of 734 good frames. Optical setup was a Celestron C6, with a Philips SN900C Webcam straight on the back. Video captured using SharpCap and processed in registax.