This weekend I was able to get some more time with Jupiter, and finally it's Great Red Spot. Good thing I took advantage of the 80% seeing as it got cloudy and miserable the next day and the rest of the weekend.

First on the agenda was a little collimation which to my surprise wasn't needed at all. I am really impressed with how well this telescope stays in collimation even after over a year since the last time I collimated. I attribute that to the screws which seem to be really tight and the reason I haven't switched them out for the Bob's Knobs I have in the garage yet.

Second up was setting a couple of buttons on my gamepad (which I use to control my mount) to controll my focuser. I really don't like controlling things through software and prefer the more tactile feel of pressing a button. I achieved this using ASCOMPAD which I guess is part of the EQMOD project that helps control ASCOM devices but I am not too sure why they didn't include this functionality into the main EQMOD application. I still need to work out which are the best steps to use but it's working great and simplifies my workflow quite a bit.

Jupiter is pretty high up in the sky by the time it appears in my sky right now so it doesn't take much time to start acquiring some good images. I still find that once it reaches about 70° in altitude, it really begins to shine in my FireCapture window.

While waiting for the Red Spot to appear I decided that would be a good time to setup a capture script using FireCapture's script interface. I could setup an RGB sequence using the Autorun menu but that seems clunky having to create whatever many sets of captures you want and then having to tell it which filter to use manually. And as far as I can tell, you can't save your sequence for the next session so you always have to do this manually.

Setting up the script is a pretty simple process and works great. You are able to save your script for future use without having to program it again.

Here is my script if you are interested creating your own. It's pretty self explanatory. The only changes I would probably make for my next session is, well 200 loops is a lot but I didn't want to baby sit the computer and I think having a longer wait time between loops would be more economical with the amount of files it produces. Right now I have 4 seconds to compensate for the amount of time it takes the filter wheel to return to Luminance after the Blue filter. For jupiter animations I could probably extend this to 1 - 3 minutes.

	Loop 200

	SetFilter L

	Wait 4000

	StartCapture 30s

	SetFilter R

	Wait 3000

	StartCapture 30s

	SetFilter G

	Wait 3000

	StartCapture 30s

	SetFilter B

	Wait 3000

	StartCapture 30s

	EndLoop

Once the Red Spot appeared, it was smooth sailing with my script in hand. That was until about 30 minutes in when my computer crashed, which you'll see in the animation below. I think it was due to me processing some images while the sessions was going. Note to self, if you want to process some images while it's capturing, don't use the capture PC and instead use the imaging PC I have set up on the network. I think I just ran out of RAM which ruined an otherwise possibly perfect rotation animation.

After the crash the planet had crossed the meridian so when I got everything back up I had to do a meridian flip and my focus suffered a bit. I am not sure if that was seeing, bad focus or dew on the collector plate. I did notice, even with the dew shield which was usually enough to control dew, the plate had accumulated quite a bit of dew so I invested in a heater ring for next time.

As far as processing goes, I am still trying to find my sweet spot. Sometimes I over process and it looks good to me in the moment, then not so good a few days later. A lighter touch does give it a more "professional" look to it but I think it leaves the image a bit soft. You can tell which frames are over processed and which frames have a light touch in the animation below.

So here are some of the better images of the night and the animation of the GRS traveling across the disk.

Jupiter and its Great Red Spot - February 13, 2026

Jupiter and its Great Red Spot Animation - February 13, 2026