Well here it is, finally.

A 15-frame animation of the Io shadow transit, Io transitting onto the disc of Jupiter, and Ganymede coming out of Jupiter's shadow.

The thing which excited me most, was that Ganymede actually starts as a crescent! Across about 3 frames you can see ganymede come out from behind the curved shadow of Jupiter! :eyepop:

The seeing fluctuated between 5 (or below) and 7 out of 10, and as such, about 5 of the 15 frames are rubbish, but they had to be included to make the animation complete. Some clouds passed through a few avi's as well, which made colour balance matching very difficult.

Attached are 4 of the better frames.

Taken at 5fps with the ToUcam 840k using 900nc firmware and Optimised Color macro. 120 frames of each channel (R/G/B) were stacked before the usual processing routine in AstraImage and then photoshop.

I just love watching these animations, and seeing how different latitudes rotate faster or slower. It really makes the planet (and image) seem alive.

Download the animation here:

Jupiter/Io/Ganymede Animated GIF (650k)

It will animate slowly as your computer downloads the whole image, and then it will animate faster.

Comments welcome!

Attached Images

20060326-jupiter-all.jpg (96.1 KB, 22 views)

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Mike
. mikesalway.com.au - Astronomy and Photography by Mike Salway
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery

Mike!! This is absolutely brilliant! well done!! seriously, absolutely breathtaking!!

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It's great. Amazing how a little animation adds a 3D effect so well.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Wow... That's amazing.

You Aussies sure seem to view everything upside down. At first it looked a bit odd, but that's just because I'm used to seeing north at the top of most pictures.

Mike, another great animation!

BTW, last night I looked at your site for the first time...nice job, a lot of great pics in the forum, like your graveyard ones, too. It appears that people there have fun with their images--seems like a diverse and good-natured bunch of people. It should be fun, right? Good attitude there.

And I want Vermin's avatar!! Tell him I'll give him a beer for it. Where did he get it? It's a good response to Hoagland via my kitty cats.

Keep up the great work & congratulations again on your Astro-Publication Trifecta. (nice-looking family you got there, too.)

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