Inspired 'go' at Jupiter

Conn Buckley · Post by **Conn Buckley** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 11:37 pm

Dave, thanks and well done on your talk last week on webcamming planets. I was inspired to try the Philips ToUcamPROII on the the LX 200R 10". I got dewed out by 21:30 ... never experienced so much dew to settle so fast.

I was using the chart in 'Astronomy Now' and knew that Io was due to go behind Jupiter's limb at 20:51 and my grandiose plan was to see if I could capture an image of Jupiter with Io very close by. I captured my first avi at 21:05 and I could see no sign of Io in a playback so I thought that the fov was too small for Io to be in the frame. My second avi at 21:30 showed Jupiter to be quite dim and hence my discovery of the dewing problem.

I never got to try out a Barlow and indeed the focus was a manual effort ( the electric focusser was making/breaking contact).
I had a couple of practice runs with registax5 and it was only tonight when I spent more time playing with the settings that I noticed that Io was in the frame (left edge centre). I realise the image is on the grainy side but I do not know if it is well focussed.

We get so few decent nights for observing and it seems that most of those are curtailed by dewing so I really would appreciate any advice on a good system to deal with dewing.

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:43 pm

Hi Conn, thats a good shot, maybe increase the saturation at the end of the registax run and try more wavelets settings, there might be more detail you could squeeze out of the avi, my 2 cents.

Dew is a killer, you need a dew-not dew band and something like a kendrick typeIV controller, wont cost the earth and gives you some control of the heater band. These parts can be got on astromart secondhand cheaply enough.

Believe it or not, I have 2 heater bands on my 12" and a dew shield, this is what it takes to keep it dew free for the night.
Dew bands are not enough.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:01 pm

That's a great capture there Conn!
Did you get to see it cross the disk at all?
The shadow was ink black on it and it fell right next to the GRS.

Was out the same night and made a small animation..
(dew was a nightmare that night in Shannon also!!!)
The 10'' got totally covered and I had to get the hairdrier out
and thats with a heater band and dewshield to boot!
Dave's not kidding.. you'd nearly need a bonfire under the scope sometimes.

Conn Buckley · Post by **Conn Buckley** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 7:40 pm

Thanks Dave and Frank for your advice. You both feel that dew
bands are not sufficient and given that I am unlikely to be
transporting the 10" to a remote site then maybe I should
try the hairdryer for effectiveness first.
I was out the night after the Io transit so I missed that last
opportunity. I shall try again. There are some super images
of Jupiter by Irish amateurs but for sheer satisfaction there
is nothing like the one you capture yourself.