Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and located 5th distant from the sun. A Gas giant composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, Jupiter is more than 2.5 times as massive as the rest of the other planets combined and equivalent to 1,321 Earths, but still only 1/1000th that of the sun. Despite the massive size, due to it’s orbital distance and relative distance from Earth it is only the third brightest object in the night sky behind the Moon and Venus with an apparent magnitude of upto -2.94.
Jupiter has 67 known satellites (moons). The 4 most well known to amateur astronomers are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – the Galilean moons, so named for Galileo who first discovered them.
Jupiter imaged on 3rd March 2016
Some planetary images testing out the performance of the 3x barlow.
So on the 11th the clouds parted and I was able to get the scope out for a play. After setting up and aligning, the first target for the evening was of course Jupiter. This was also the first chance to try out the ASI120MC-S camera “in the wild” so I was definately interested in…