Short Animation of Io, Jupiter, and Europa, May 16th

On the night of May 16th, despite high winds I attempted to put together a sequence of Jupiter images to make an animation.  I took video approximately every 20 minutes for six capture sessions in total.

The above animation is only showing two of those six final images. Problems with the others were different light intensities and increasing cloud cover.  For reference, here are the first five images so you an see what they look like.  The above animated GIF was taken from the second and third images.  The sixth image is not shown because it was simply garbage due to the clouds by that time.

Session #1

The sky was by far the clearest during the first capture session.

Session #2
Session #3
Session #4

Oh look above, there is Ganymede!  It just popped out from behind Jupiter!

Session #5

You can see the quality of this final image is noticeably degraded from the prior four, due to the encroaching clouds, which made the sixth session unusable.  Also observe that Ganymede moved a little to the left across the 20 minutes from the fourth image.

(And in case you are wondering, at this time Callisto was way to the right of Jupiter.)

Paul

Paul

I write frequently about astrophotography, technology advice, and my other interests like science fiction. I have over 30 years of experience in computer programming, information technology, and project management.

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