I had a pretty good night out last night. I elected to go with the polar alignment from well over a week ago. I had to guide a little more than last time, but not too bad. I checked collimation and found it perfect. Seeing seemed to be about 5-6/10, and probably got worse during the night.

It took me about 30 seconds to get the planetary targets onto the display after slewing and pointing as best I could using the eyepiece. I found that I had left the Telrad on the last time I used it, but everything else worked perfectly and I fumbled around only a little. It got very dewy as the night wore on, but the heater stayed ahead of it. It got a little cool toward the end, so I put on a light jacket and was comfortable. I hit the western safety limit and I had nearly ran out of storage at around 0110 and came in. All in all I really enjoyed it.

I first shot Saturn in 13 LRGB runs. I manually commanded all filter changes, planning to focus between each filter change. I found that the seeing was not good enough that I could confidently achieve good focus. After reaching green and giving it my best shot, I stopped focusing between filters.

I then went on to shoot Jupiter in 13 IRRGB runs. I focused using G and used autorun to capture these runs. I noted that Io was approaching the limb, but I had time to grab some shots of the Moon before it crossed the limb.

On the Moon, I shot something (cannot remember what) in IR only, then went on to find Mons Rumker, Marius Hills, and the hilly/volcanic area north and west of Aristarchus all near the terminator. I could not resist shooting them in IRRGB – one run for each location. I did 5000 frames of IR and 3000 of each color channel for the color shots.

I then when back to Jupiter and found Io almost at Jupiter’s western limb. I started shooting IRRGB sets in FC Autorun. I wanted to track Io as far across the disk as possible, and its shadow and GRS when they followed. I got about 30 sets before I ran out of laptop storage. I think switched the FC directory to the SD Card and got about 30 more sets before the mount hit the western safety limit. I couldn’t see Io because it was blended into Jupiter’s disk, but I think that it was close to emerging. Its shadow was more than half way across the disk, and the GRS was well in view. I think that I was shooting 2-minute sets for over 90 minutes!

Processing will probably be a challenge, in that I have very little storage for making PIPP runs on the planets. I think that I can “dig” myself out by processing the lunar first (will not process in PIPP), and delete the video files. I can probably transfer some stuff to OneDrive, but that can be slow and painful.

I want to do two experiments with the extended number of sets that I shot of Jupiter/Io. I am interested in seeing how WinJuPos handles a moon transit. I know that the ephemeris will show a moon that is in the field of view, but can it derotate both Jupiter’s disk and a moon that are moving at different rates? The second thing that I want to do is make an animation of Io, its shadow, and the GRS moving across Jupiter’s rotating disk.