This is a looping, short sequence of video showing the planet Jupiter, captured on the night of 15-Aug-2009 with a Philips SPC-900NC webcam through an 8" reflector telescope. On this night the astronomical "seeing" was below average, and the effect is obvious in this video sequence. None of the frames are really sharp and some of them are nearly unrecognizable. This animation resembles closely an observer's view of Jupiter through the eyepiece at high magnification on a night with poor atmospheric conditions - the subject appears as though it is under a layer of running water.

By discarding the poorest quality frames and combining the rest, a decent composite image can be constructed. The human eye and brain possess a similar capability, the ability to construct an image representative of the best visual moments and disregarding the rest. For amateur astronomers this ability must be developed and nourished through practice.

The result of processing the best 150 frames of the video from which this sequence was extracted can be seen as the next image in this gallery.