Contains:  Solar system body or event
Jupiter (12 May 2021), rdk_CA

Jupiter (12 May 2021)

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

We had several days of relatively early-morning calm air here in the Bay Area, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to get my first glimpse of Jupiter and Saturn for 2021. I lucked out with seeing and was finally able to get a respectable image of Jupiter (on my fourth attempt!)

Having not seen Jupiter since the December conjunction, the most striking difference is the bright yellow/orange band in the northern hemisphere, just above the equator.

To compile this image, I acquired 6 videos over a 15 minute period just before sunrise. For this, I used a color QHY 5iii 178C planetary camera in conjunction with an atmospheric dispersion corrector. (Settings: gain = 9, exposure time = 50 ms, frame rate = 20 fps.) Each video consisted of 1600 frames, of which I then stacked the best 40%. Sharpening was done using RegiStax, and I then de-rotated the resulting images using WinJUPOS.

Jupiter was approximately 30 degrees above the horizon for this session:

Visual magnitude: -2.3

Apparent size: 38.7 arcsec

Distance: 5.09 AU

Looking forward to further imaging of these planets throughout the summer!

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Jupiter (12 May 2021), rdk_CA