Started processing some of the images taken on April 8th, the only evening with a clear night. I spend a good hour in the near freezing air to capture Jupiter with various settings. The one below was taken with a 2X barlow and a simple webcam. This is a mosaic of two frames as not all moons fit into the rather narrow 640×480 CCD sensor. Unfortunately the fourth moon, Callisto, is just out of the frame to the right.

Jupiter – 2017 opposition – SW80ED and 2x barlow

Telescope: Skywatcher 80ED with 2x barlow lens
Sensor: Philips Vesta webcam with IR-UR cut filter
Processing: Registax and GIMP

Took 40 seconds of video at 20 images/sec which produced a 351MB AVI file. The video is then analysed, registered and stacked with Registax.  Color saturation and light levels where then adjusted in GIMP.

I also took many more video with a 3x barlow, but getting the focus right was a challenge. And I’m afraid the end result is just a “bigger” Jupiter, no additional details. I will need a few nights to process those and see which one turned out well. I will also try using the drizzle algorithm on the image above to see if I can get a larger and better image.