Jupiter

One of the four mysterious gas giants, Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within our Solar System, with a diameter of 86,881 miles. The stripes and swirls you see on Jupiter's surface are cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Unfortunately, this means Jupiter doesn't have a solid surface to stand on, so all we can do is observe this planet from its orbit and Earth. 

The Great Red Spot

On Earth, the largest hurricanes ever recorded spanned over 1,000 miles, with winds gusting up to around 200 mph. Even though this was significantly severe for Earth, a gigantic storm twice the size of Earth is currently swirling wildly over Jupiter's surface. The Great Red Spot has been the biggest storm throughout the entire solar system for the past 150 years. Researchers have been studying the great Red Spot for a while, but they cannot discover what causes its mystifying swirl of reddish hues.

Mystifying Auroras and Rings

In 1979, the Voyager mission discovered that Jupiter possessed a faint ring system like Saturn. Although the images it took were not the greatest compared to now, it gave us insight that all four gas-giant planets in our solar system have ring systems, just not as extreme as Saturn. Now with the development of the James Webb Telescope, we've been able to uncover many mysteries Jupiter was keeping from us all these years.

The image above was taken with James Webb Telescope's (JWST) Near-Infrared Camera, revealing visible auroras that extend to high altitudes above Jupiter's northern and southern poles. In the image below, you can clearly see Jupiter's rings, swirls, bright waves, and vortices in its atmosphere. It is crazy to see how much humanity has developed in such a short time, as these kinds of observations and claims were impossible before JWST.

Photographing Jupiter

Planetary Photography is one of the most popular types of astrophotography around. With each planet's unique characteristics, astrophotographers enjoy capturing photos of every planet from Mercury to Uranus. 

Since Jupiter is very bright and big in the night sky, it's a walk in the park to locate it with a designated astronomy app like Stellarium or Sky Guide. You can even view Jupiter and its moons with a pair of binoculars. The problem for astrophotography is the size of Jupiter. Even though you can see the bright dot in the sky, you need at least 100x magnification to capture the distinction between its strips and red spots. So to get a good photo of Jupiter, I suggest having at least 150x magnification with an aperture of 8 inches to capture the details on its surface. To calculate your telescope's magnification, use this formula: (Focal Length of Telescope)/(Focal Length of Eye Piece) = Magnification.

The next step in getting a crisp shot of Jupiter's surface details is taking multiple photos and stacking them. Since Jupiter is so bright, there is a simple trick to this. Set your camera's ISO to around 2400-3600, switch to video record mode, and raise the FPS to the highest it can possibly go. This will allow us to take a tremendous amount of photos over a period of time. For example, if I had my camera set to 30 FPS, I would be taking 1800 pictures per minute of Jupiter. Now you could go two ways with this. If you have a motorized mount, set it up towards Jupiter, let it track it, and start recording for as long as you please. Remember, the more data you collect, the greater your photo's quality will be. If you do NOT have a motorized mount, set up your telescope to make Jupiter pass through the center of your camera's frame while you record. Even though you won't be able to take 10-minute videos, this will still be adequate data to make a pleasing image of Jupiter. After taking your video, you can center, stack, and process it through PIPP, AutoStakkert, and RegiStax. I will be making a tutorial soon on how to do all of this, but for now, you can find a good tutorial here. If you want to go above and beyond, you can take your final product from RegiStax into Photoshop or PixInsight for some touch-ups.

My photo of Jupiter below was captured using an unmodified Canon Rebel EOS T3i (600D) DSLR camera and a refractor telescope (100mm Aperture, 900mm focal length).

Jupiter Details:

• Planet # from the Sun: 5

• Moons: 80

• Object Type: Gas-Giant Planet

• Mean Distance: 484 million miles

• Apparent Magnitude: -2.2

• Apparent Size: 30 - 51 Arc Seconds

Resources:

Webb's Jupiter Images Showcase Auroras (NASA)

NASA Science - Jupiter

Jupiter's Great Red Spot: A Swirling Mystery

Gallery of Jupiter