Last night the forecast for “seeing” ranged from excellent to good. Excellent seeing is very rare so I decided to try some planetary photography. Jupiter is about the only planet in a good place right now, Saturn is getting lower in the west and Venus isn’t a very photogenic planet. So, Jupiter it was. I am very pleased with how it turned out.
I think these are the best photos of Jupiter I’ve ever taken. These are stacks of video frames, taken over about three minutes. In this image, I got two of Jupiter’s moons. Europa is in the upper left and Io at lower right. Io and Europa are two of the Galilean moons. The other two, Ganymede and Callisto, are out of the field of view. Io and Europa are approximately the size of our moon. Apparent size from Earth is about 1 arc second, so it is like taking a photo of a dime 2.5 miles away. Another photo of a Kit Fox at the den. One couldn’t ask for nicer light!
