Jupiter and Venus Photos
February 9, 2012

This image of Jupiter was taken on February 9, 2012, here in Erie, PA. I'm getting a little better. The sky was exceptionally clear, winds nonexistent, and the nearly full moon had not risen above the eastern horizon yet. Jupiter was about 15° west of due south, high in the sky. My Celestron NexImage was used with a 2x Barlow lens in my Celestron 8SE telescope. The photo is a composite of about 500 short time exposure images recorded at 5 fps. This really helped avoid atmospheric scintillation. If I had done a better job on the focus, the detail might have been even better. RegiStax v2 software was used.

To the right is my first ever image of Venus on the same night. I wasn't lucky enough to get the focus as good on Venus, plus it was much nearer to the horizon, so the atmosphere was thicker there.