Jupiter, a few weeks after its 2022 opposition.

Jupiter, a few weeks after its 2020 opposition.

Finally got a decent night for imaging Jupiter and Saturn, very low here in the UK (just around 15 degrees above the horizon).

Seeing was terrible, but I'm still relatively satisfied with the results, given how difficult these planets are this year from this latitude.

Visible Jupiter moons: Ganymede (left) and Io (right).

This weekend weather in London was quite amazing: sunny, a bit too windy, but sky almost perfect. Seeing forecast was also encouraging, so on Friday evening I took a chance to shoot at Jupiter.

It was a bit of an unlucky evening: firstly I discovered that I forgot my red dot finder on, so the battery was totally drained. After struggling for a while trying to align my GoTo mount without it, I decided it was worth to leave the telescope alone for a few minutes (my garden is easly visible from the street... I didn't want to do it unless absolutely necessary) and got back inside to find new batteries.

After everything was aligned, and I was ready to observe and record my images, I noticed that the image wasn't exactly satisfying at the eyepiece. When I replaced the eyepiece with the camera, the very unfocused image revealed me why: some tree branches were in the way, and of course the image was deteriorated from the interference!

I looked around me to see if I could find a better sp...

Spring is back, and here in Milan we finally had a few days (and nights) of very nice weather.

I also bought a new lightweight battery for my HEQ5 mount, instead of the usual heavy car battery I’ve been using until now, so I took a minimal setup and placed myself in a local park.

Seeing wasn’t perfect, but it was fine enough to shoot a few nice details of an almost full moon.

More importantly, Jupiter was at opposition a few weeks ago, so it’s still in a very favourable position.

Satellites in order, from left: Io, Europa, Ganimede

All these shots were done using my own Planetary Imager.
Image processing was done using Autostakkert (stacking), Registax (wavelets), and GIMP (post processing).

Another couple of high resolution images, taken on the Appennines, with quite a lucky seeing.
Jupiter is now rising earlier, and it was a welcome preview to the observing night.

Firstly I tried shooting on prime focus, using small magnification, and then I used a 2.5 barlow lens. The prime focus shooting should have been just a test, but it proved to be the better one, as I had troubles focusing with the barlow lens (we were already in “night” mode, and I had to darken a lot my monitor, so focusing was really difficult).

This is the prime focus shooting elaboration.

Red spot visible

Saturn is starting to rise earlier, and around 4am is starting to be fairly hight for a few shots.

Since we already finished observing I could remove my notebook darkening panel, and focus quite better with the 2.5x barlow.

A first glimpse on Saturn, waiiting for the next opposition. Seeing was very good.

It was also a very satisfying deep sky stargazing night (which was actually the main purpouse of our trip to the Appennines).

Spring constellations enable us to go really “deep”, with very far and suggestive galaxy clusters.

Another shooting, much improved in quality compared to the previous ones: Jupiter bands are very well defined, rich of details, much more compared to the images of fifteen days ago: probably both because of the better seeing, and of the removal of the IR-pass filter, replaced with a more classical IR-Block, gathering much more light.

The “guest” of the title is the dark dot almost at the center of the planet: it’s not an image artifact, but it’s the shadow of the Io satellite projected on the planet. Basically, a solar eclipse on Jupiter.

The satellite itself is not visible on the picture, submerged in the planet disk. The other two satellites are, from closest to farthest, Europa e Ganimede.

Notice: this article is currently available in italian only.
I will translate it soon. You may contact me via comments if you want me to “prioritize” this article first.

Per una serie di vicissitudini (e per il maltempo che l’ha fatta da padrone) non ho potuto osservare molto Giove, in opposizione proprio nei prossimi giorni, e quindi nel periodo di migliore osservabilità.

Ieri sera comunque sono riuscito ad effettuare qualche osservazione e qualche ripresa, approfittando di un seeing stranamente non cattivo come solitamente da casa mia: purtroppo non ho balconi o terrazzi, e mi tocca riprendere ed osservare dalla finestra aperta, cosa che alza di parecchio la turbolenza per il continuo passaggio d’aria tra interno ed esterno.

Jupiter shot from home, average/bad seeing conditions (but luckly not so bad), quite low on the horizon (less than 20°).

Infrared filter to block most of the atmospheric turbulence.

In visuale era piuttosto evidente la Grande Macchia Rossa, che nelle riprese invece sembra quasi invisibile. Non è infatti il globulo scuro che si vede nella banda in alto a sinistra. Questo perchè la ripresa è stata effettuata nel vicino infrarosso e non nel visuale, per ridurre l’interferenza atmosferica, quindi i dettagli visibili nella ripresa sono un po’ diversi da quelli che si vedono ad occhio nudo.

Si vedono molto bene anche due dei satelliti galileiani, Io ed Europa.

Ripresa effettuata al fuoco diretto di un Meade ACF 8″, 2000mm di focale, con filtro IR “Planet IR Pro 807“, camera QHY5II-L. Sommati circa 800 frames (di 2000 totali).

Aggiornamento, 02/02/2015
Giusto una manciata di giorni dopo ho potuto ripetere il tentativo, con una messa a fuoco un po’ più fortunata.
Non è visibile la macchia rossa, in questo caso, ma sono riuscito a tenere nel campo tutti e quattro i satelliti galileiani.