Jupiter Under Good Seeing

When I lived in Indiana, sky conditions were rarely favorable for planetary imaging. Skies were either hazy and stable, masking detail, or transparent and unsteady, making the planets shimmer as though under rapidly moving water. Here in North Carolina, conditions are frequently favorable for imaging planets, and last night proved to be the case.

Shortly after sunset, Jupiter is approaching its maximum altitude in the sky, making circumstances ideal for imaging. I set up the 5-inch Mak with a 2x Barlow and the Mallincam Skyraider SLP camera. The SLP is an excellent camera; its small pixels (2.5 um x 2.5 um) support the capture of fine detail. Even though it is only a USB 2.0 camera, it can capture at nearly 50 fps, which is adequate for “lucky imaging” under good seeing. Lucky imaging is a technique where large numbers of images are captured rapidly, and the best of them are stacked and processed. Such an approach minimizes the effects of short-term variations in the Earth’s atmosphere and helps to ensure a high quality result.

This picture of Jupiter was captured using this technique. Of about 5,000 captured frames, 2,500 were stacked and processed to produce the final image. Given this image was taken with a very small (but high quality) telescope, the result is a tribute to the excellence of the seeing and the effectiveness of the lucky imaging technique; a great deal of detail is visible on the planet, including white oval storms. The moon visible in the image is Io.

Tech card: 5 inch Mak, SLP imager, 2x Barlow. 2500/5000 frames stacked in AstroSurface with wavelets in Registax. Color normalization in Nebulosity 4.