saturn, so close to a hex

if you look at the top of the planet, you get a hint of an angular structure at the north pole, rather than a circle,
but i'm pretty sure it's artifact, not the polar hexagon which is smaller :(

Saturn 7/4/2017 7:45 UT

image details:
Meade LX850 12" f/8
televue 2x Barlow
FocalLength~4100mm
Resolution~0.19"

ASI120MM-S mono camera
ZWO RGB filters, Baader IR pass "685" nm
2 minute captures for each filter R G B
captures with firecapture @ ~22-55 fps
exposure 15-45ms ms per frame
stacked in autostakkert, combined in WinJupos, sharpened in registax 6

7/4/2017
Eastbluff, CA

Solar rotation Active region 2665

like the earth, the sun itself rotates.  its period is once every 24 days at the equator, but only once every 35 days at the poles.  this was determined by watching sunspots rotate across the surface.  

This animation shows a group of sunspots (AR2665) rotating across the disc of the sun over the course of 9 days, from July 8th to the 16th 2017: 

Sun 7/8-16/2017, AR 2665

interestingly, today (7/23/2017) this "active region" lived up to its name and spat a gigantic coronal mass ejection out into space.  fortunately, it's facing away from us, though apparently right at mars, potentially affecting satellites there.  more at spaceweather.com

a few wacko preppers are predicting earthquakes as a result.  a more balanced perspective can be found here.  In any event, if a really big one of these things hits earth, our electronics are fried.  the active region should be rotating back towards us in about a week, hopefully bringing nothing more than a few auroras.   

Hydrogen alpha versions of this region at the beginning of the rotation can be seen in a previous post:

http://astrowhw.blogspot.com/2017/07/big-prominence-this-weekend.html

Image details:

DMK 51 web cam, Takahashi FS-60C, 60 mm aperture at f/4.2 with a reducer.  Baader solar film, Tiffen 77 mm green and IR ND.6 filters.  The field of view is approximately 96x72 arc minutes.  20 second video capture at 12 fps, aligned in autostakkert, wavelets in registax.

jovian animation

on 6/17/17 Jupiter put on a show:
both io and ganymede transited jupiter's face while the great red spot was showing.  unfortunately, the seeing was not great.  here's what i salvaged:

Jupiter Ganymede, Io's shadow
6-18-2017 05:23 UT

the animation shows ganymede (upper left) rotating across the face of jupiter and then fade from view.  io has already begun its transit, but is lost in the northern equatorial belt.  just as ganymede fades from view, io's shadow races across from the left side.  towards the end you can again see a hint of ganymede again, (brownish spot) rotating across the surface up top.

here's shot from the night before with a bit better seeing, but no exciting events:

Jupiter
6/17/2017 05:28 UT

imaging notes
Poor seeing on the night of the animation
combining all the images in winjupos smoothed things out dramatically, 
but required way too much time in photoshop combining the win jupos and standard versions.  
The mono camera/filters do seem to give better color (previous night).  

image details:
Meade LX850 12" f/8
televue 2x Barlow
FocalLength~4100mm
Resolution~0.19"

for animation:
ZWO ASI120MC (color camera)
approximately 40x1 minute captures spaced by a minute
captures with firecapture @ ~134 fps
exposure 5 ms per frame

for still image:
ASI120MM-S mono camera
ZWO RGB filters
3x2 minute captures for each filter R G B
captures with firecapture @ ~190 fps
exposure 5 ms per frame
stacked in autostakkert, combined in WinJupos, sharpened in registax 6

6/17-18/2017
Eastbluff, CA