Jupiter 20161123
The first powerup of the 20cm meade lx200gps (circa 2003) after the operation showed a display full of garbage characters.
The second powerup showed normal operation… yay! The first pass at tracking GPS fix still took 2 or 3 rows of *** but that was to be expected, the first time after getting a new battery. The next time I suspect it will be within seconds.
The hand controller was quite unresponsive and a pain in the cold. Lucky for me, the handyavi telescope control software was working this morning and I was able to slew and guide and focus the scope via the laptop controls.
Jupiter was only 20 deg above the horizon at 05:20 EST (10:20 UTC) with the last quarter moon nearby, so the sky transparency was pretty bad. Seeing was also poor to average.
exposure time was 40ms, run time was 120seconds for 2964 frames, of which the best 10% were used for this final image. Jupiter is 32 arcseconds big at the moment and the final image framing was 400×400 pixels.
Stellarium shows the Great Red Spot on the face as does the android app JoveMoons.
That’s good news because I think I can see it as well.
It was -12C and the observatory roof was frozen shut. Had to bang along the sides where the skirt board was in contact with the wall and it opened well after that,wheels crunching through the snow and ice on the rails no problem. The only other item of note was that the focus setting was quite a ways off from the last observing session, on the much warmer 19th of November.