Jupiter Practice

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I'm very excited for Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars all being visible this summer and fall, so I want to be fully prepared with my new ZWO planetary camera.

I've had some success but the images aren't quite as good as I'm hoping for. One issue is that Jupiter is still very low in the sky, but the other is that I haven't been taking long enough videos. I generally shoot for a minute or two, but usually Jupiter can go for up to 4 minutes before planetary rotation starts to impact the image. Longer videos means more frames which hopefully means better stacking.

Tonight I collimated, focused, picked exposure settings by eye (eventually I'll have to save these settings) and set the recording to go for 4 minutes.

Jupiter4.png

This photo is still somewhat blurrier than I'd like, but it's still excellent. The red spot is visible, as is Io and It's shadow.

Jupiter4 annotated.png

At this point it's also probably a good idea for me to clean my mirrors, it's been ages since I've done that.

Hopefully later this summer I'll get some good shots, some time lapse animations, and a full map of the Jupiter and Mars!