From: "matt carmine" <jim_chung@sunshine.net>

Date: October 8, 2011 5:45:14 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: More planetary fun

My alarm didn't go off at 2 AM so I kind of slept in until 5. Seeing was

predicted to be very good again according to CSC so I decided to have a go at

Mars just before predawn at 6:30. I spent quite a bit of time with the

hairdryer as the secondary mirror, telrad, finder and filter slide were dripping

with dew. Seeing was actually quite poor compared to yesterday so I hoped it

would improve and spent the time processing data from my huge f/45 Jupiter.

Despite all the noise from maximizing my gains and the limited number of frames

I was able to capture (I had to halve my capture time estimate to mitigate

Jupiter's rapid rotation) it turned out better than I hoped:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4852049/BigJupiterOct7.jpg

Mars is so far away at the moment that I had to image at f/45 again (doubled

stacked barlows) and at a slower frame rate to reduce gains noise. Could only

stack about 10% of the frames as the sky was really turbulent. Still

surprisingly good which shows the power of freezing the seeing and software:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4852049/MarsOct8.jpg

Jim