Jupiter 20161221
Predicted to be clear this morning, got up at 05:00 EST and it was cloudy with a few holes. Went outside anyway and it turned out to be the best opportunity to image Jupiter in over 2 weeks.
Weather: -3C Winds 5-15kph from SW
Seeing: poor Transparency: average
Last quarter moon within 25 deg of Jupiter
The observatory roof had sagged in the snow, ice and icerain and the top actually touched the telescope OTA on the way open. Ug.
Note to self, the next Observatory will have more clearance and steeper pitch angle on the roof.
The Meade LX200GPS showed a display of garbage on startup. A power cycle brought it back up normally.
The windows laptop restarted and Handyavi was able to connect to the scope to allow for manual control of slewing and focus.
Pointing was off a couple of degrees, probably due to the roof strike. Centered and recalibrated and it tracked not too badly.
The moon Ganymede is just off to the lower left of Jupiter. Sharp focus was not possible this morning due to the poor seeing.
This is the best 25% of around 2500 frames, taken in 120 seconds at a 37msec exposure time each.
This animation includes the best 10%, 25% and or 50% of the images starting at 10:28UT to 10:43UT, or 15 minutes.
The vertical artefacts that show up in the middle of the animation are when Jupiter drifted off to the side of the field of view.