From: Jim Chung <jim_chung@sunshine.net>

Date: March 21, 2009 3:00:22 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: Dione Transit of Saturn movie

Thanks Alan & Milton,

I'll keep the Applescript in mind for next time but in order for it to work I'll have to autoguide at the same time to keep the planet from drifiting off the chip or into a giant dust mote!

Jim

Quoting Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>:

Hi Jim;

Very nice.

Hopefully by the time Jupiter gets up I'll have an animation tool built into Astro IIDC.

I don't know if you used it, but there is an Apple Script listed in the Astro IIDC manual (pages 82)that can automate the capture process. You can specify the interval in seconds at which movies get captured,  the duration of how long to capture and how long this total process is supposed to run for too.

Hope that helps..

Milton Aupperle

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "jimchung2338" <jim_chung@...> wrote:

Seeing again was quite good last night in Toronto so I revisited Saturn for the last time this season I suspect.  There was a timely transit of Dione and Enceladus predicted just after midnight and the closed rings this season make observing them possible.  I began shooting 90s streams just before midnight and for every 15 minutes until I dozed off after 2 AM and woke up at 2:30 with Saturn dipping behind a tree.

This is a flash movie made in CS2 with 100/1500 frames stacked, aligned and oversharpened to show surface changes better.  You can see Dione (upper left) approaching Saturn and if you review several loops I think you can make out a grey round region that travels across the surface of Saturn at the same level.  My CCD should've been cleaner because several small dust motes contributed to artefactual noise.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Planetary/Saturnflash.swf

This was a particularly fun experiment and I'd like to try this with my TIS colour ccd for Jupiter this summer.