Seeing was great this morning, 12th May local time, the best I’ve had all year. Ganymede was approaching Jupiter, soon to begin transit. 

Here’s one of the 11 images I captured from this morning – the first one to be fully processed and one of the best from the session. The others are still at various stages of processing – more to come in the next day or so – plus an animation of course!

There is an NEB outbreak setting on the bottom left, as well as a large rift on the NEB rotating into view on the right. Ganymede has a number of albedo markings too, including a bright spot on the southern tip.

Jupiter and Ganymede in Very Good Seeing!

After the shocking run of seeing I’ve had this year so far, finally the good seeing is starting to come. I can’t tell you what a joy it was to process this image after the rubbish I’ve been processing for months!

More details to come when the final images and animation are ready.

Thanks for looking.

On Saturday morning 9th May we had a beautiful clear morning but only barely above average seeing. I captured Jupiter with Oval BA and the small white spot next to it, and before sunrise I turned my scope towards Venus for the first time this year, and captured the lovely crescent phase in UV light to reveal albedo markings on the cloud tops.

Jupiter and Oval BA

And below is Venus at around 6am local time, captured in UV and RGB. Venus is currently a 31% illuminated disc, and is shining stunningly bright at mag -4.5!

Venus in UV False Colour

Please read on to find out more about the capture and processing.

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