Early Morning Jupiter & Luna

I finally had the opportunity to image Jupiter with the GRS on the earth side of the planet and I must say, it was one of my most difficult images to capture! Once this giant gas ball cleared our trees, as usual, things went down hill in a hurry... I'm not saying I regret the session, especially after all the terrible weather we've been having for over a month! I'm just saying things could have been better. To make a long story short, these images were captured through thick high clouds, 2/5 seeing and using my wife's hair dryer to keep the dew from totally soaking the lens. I'm talking 97% humidity, dew point of 66 and the air temp of 65 deg. Yup! it was starting to fog like nobody's business! I was was wore out after 56 2-3 minute captures on both the planet and on the moon. With that being said, here is the best I could muster up 3AM Sunday morning...

Waxing Gibbous 99.6% 14.30 days

Both images were captured Tuesday night with less than desirable conditions. Seeing was 2/5 at best, with high clouds thickening, but after 5 weeks of clouds and rain... I was just happy to get the equipment out of the garage! The first pic is one afocal shot through a 32mm ep and the second consist of 7800 sub web cam frames stacked to generate the 7 sections I targeted for stitching of the final mosaic image. Copernicus and the Kepler crater rays are easy to spot along with Aristarchus above and left. Click the images to see full size!