Astronomy contributor John Chumack was finally able to capture the
Jupiter impact site with his 10-inch telescope from his backyard in Dayton, Ohio. And he was nice enough to share an image and a
Jupiter rotation movie with us. Below is how he put the video together:
There was an incredible amount of work that went into this movie. I captured more than 51,820 useable frames, and each full color RGB set had at least 3,900 frames.
Running through all the separate RGB channels through Registax was an all-day and all-night affair, but now I have a piece of Jupiter history in movie format, plus many very nice still images of the impact site.
I captured images starting about 2 a.m. and ran until 4:30 a.m. EST July 28 — basically 2.5 hours of rotation compressed into about 10 seconds — from my backyard observatory in Dayton, Ohio, using a DMK 21F04 Firewire camera, 2x Barlow lens, and Optec filter wheel attached to a Meade 10-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
I used IC Capture software, VirtualDub, Maxim DL, and Adobe for processing and Windows movie maker for the WMV file.
The impact mark is now spreading out. It is at least 3 times the size it was at discovery, and it appears darker and easier to see.
Get out your small scopes to witness a piece of history by getting a peek at the impact mark before it’s gone.
Related blog: Astronomy contributor images new Jupiter impact site