Tag: Jupiter

Jupiter

This year was a special occasion to observe or photograph Jupiter. The biggest planet in our Solar system got very close to Earth. In fact, it was the closest in several decades. Such events force me to take an action. I had to wait for a cloudless night and took my biggest telescope out. Well, I must admit that the opportunity of Jupiter’s opposition is great but more important than the distance between the Earth and the observed planet is the quality of seeing. The light started the journey on Sun, then traveled 778 million km to Jupiter, got reflected and traveled 367 million km back to Earth, and got spoiled in the last 100 km when passing through the thick Erth’s atmosphere.

On 19.10.2022 I was extremely lucky because Jupiter’s moon Io was transiting and creating the eclipse. Moreover, the giant red spot was visible simultaneously. I captured a few shots and got the idea to capture more of them and compose a video. In total, I was photographing the event for nearly one hour and made 15 frames out of it. You can see how quickly Jupiter spins. One day on Jupiter takes only 9 hours and 55 minutes.

And here is a static picture:

Telescope:Celestron EdgeHD C14
Aperture:354 mm
Focal length:3910 mm
MountGemini G53f
Autoguidingno
Camera:ZWO ASI485MC
Corrector:no
Filters:no
Exposure:4000xRGB (25% used) 18 ms gain 93
Date:2022-10-19

Jupiter

Jupiter is the biggest planet in Solar System, therefore it’s called giant – gas giant. It has 2.5 times mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. It has more than 60 moons and one of them (Io) I managed to capture. The picture also shows Great Red Spot, which is a storm larger than the Earth.

Few days later I tried to compose an animation, this time without Great Red Spot and the moon is Ganymede:


Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest planet in solar system; however the weight of this gas giant is only 1/1000 of the Sun. It has more than 60 moons, which were very important for formulation of modern way how we understand the universe. Four biggest moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are visible even by small telescope. Galileo was the first who saw them and noticed that next night they are on different position, thus they must be orbiting the Jupiter. This led to the confirmation of Copernicus heliocentric theory. Obviously this was not accepted very well at that time and Galileo had to face the problems with the inquisition.

Planetary photography is completely different to deep space imagining. Since the planets are bright, the exposure time doesn’t have to be long, however the planets are small, therefore the seeing (turbulences in the atmosphere) is the biggest enemy. One needs: long focal length, short exposure times (aperture, aperture, and aperture) and as many pictures as possible.

This picture is a stack of 2000 pictures together. It’s one year old, because this year the seeing hasn’t allow me to do better pictures with my latest equipment. The red spot is visible as well as the eclipse cause by the moon Io.

jup5m_1_80s_g956_0019 23-39-31-2AP-74per_res