Jupiter UTC

CM1: 28.10°

CM2: 44.90°

CM3: 334.00°

CLat: +3.00°

Description

Possibly the steadiest night I have seen in my 9 years of planetary imaging, and what better time than with Jupiter just a week away from its closest opposition with Earth in six decades! Plenty of fine detail to be seen on every part of the giant planet, especially in the Great Red Spot. The giant storm was 16,800 km in one of my earliest images of the storm in January 2014. However, I measured 14,900 km across in this image, a 12% decrease in nearly a decade. While still slightly wider than Earth, this is only one-third the size it was when regular observations of the storm began in the 1870s.

Equipment

ZWO ASI290MM

Astro-Physics Advanced Convertible Barlow

Celestron EdgeHD 14

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)