Jupiter is Stunning

Last night was beautiful and clear so I thought I'd keep trying to improve my Jupiter pictures. Sadly Saturn isn't quite up yet at a reasonable hour, so I only got Jupiter.

I made sure my telescope was calibrated properly, and that it had time to cool down to ambient temperature (it's hot in the shed I store it in). Instead of using the mirrorless camera I decided to again try my cell phone camera clamped to the lens while taking video.

I downloaded a free app that allows me to control the exposure settings on video (up to 5 minutes in the free version). I chose ISO 400 and a shutter speed of 1/80 second. Being a smartphone I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are, but that's what the app said. I should probably experiment with faster shutter speed and higher ISO to stop any blurring as I'm trying to hold the telescope pointed by hand. 

The videos were about 3 minutes long. I aligned all the frames in PIPP, stacked the top 80% of frames in autostakkert, and did some wavelets sharpening in registax.

I didn't realize it when I went outside but not only was the great red spot visible, but the moon Io was casting a shadow onto Jupiter! It's not a super rare event, but always fun to catch. 

I tried again about an hour later when Jupiter was higher in the sky. The image is a bit better, but the red spot had rotated out of view.  (Jupiter rotates very quickly, a day on Jupiter is only ten hours!)

I think I over exposed a bit which gives the planet somewhat of a Halo effect, so next time I'll see if I can remove that. I also want to try and take a bunch of pictures over a few hours to see if I can get another animation of Jupiter rotating.