Hallo Peter
Yes, with a normal modem these movies are slow to load indeed. I'm only putting DivX compressed movies on my site in the future. Beside that the size of the movie is much smaller than a GIF animation, the quality is much better also. The subtle colors are much better.
And yes, Jupiter is very bright here also. Last month I was on Terschelling and Jupiter was so bright it felt like a huge light shining on me. We heard on the news that southern Germany had -45 Celsius recently. So minus 10 isn't so bad, is it. And if you get cold, you can always tryy and get warm in a refrigerator, the temperature in there is higher than outside....
But yes, it is very cold. Unless there is a major display I'll stay inside.
Greetings, JanL