Here's a live view look at the planet Jupiter through my telescope as it is
right now in the night sky
I can see it naked eye of course.
Look at that magnification look at the details on the surface of the planet.
The fifth planet from the sun the gas giant the largest planet in our solar system
In this video, I'm going to take a picture of the planet Jupiter through my telescope.
Right now tonight actually is the best time to take a
picture of Jupiter because it's at opposition.
That means that it's at its biggest and closest for the year
as the Earth sits directly between the sun and the gas giant known as Jupiter.
Wait, this is an astrophotography youtube channel, right?
So how come I haven't ever taken a picture of the planet Jupiter before?
My first interest in astrophotography
was photographing bright objects the stuff I could see with my naked eye.
The moon and the planets were right there
I knew exactly where they were and I wanted to see them up close and photograph them.
In fact, one of the first things I did when I got my first telescope was look at the planet
Jupiter through the eyepiece and it was life-changing, for me, quite literally.
I had no idea what I was doing but through that small telescope, I could see the cloud
bands of Jupiter the great red spot the four Galilean moons orbiting the planet.
There it was. It was actually out there, it's real! In real time.
But after I observed the gas giant through my telescope and
both eyepieces that came with the telescope something happened.
I wanted more.
I wanted to see Jupiter bigger and closer and in better detail,
I felt like I had to show everyone so they could experience what I just witnessed.
I didn't expect to get that urge I thought I would see Jupiter up close
cross it off my list another awesome life experience in the books.
But, as many of you have experienced, this led me down the astrophotography
rabbit hole, or black hole.
And I went deep into astronomy, I mean really deep.
Suddenly a clear night took precedence over everything else in my life.
Astrophotography forums, space documentaries,
and joining my local astronomy club - I became obsessed with space.
And it was all because of Jupiter.
But that's when things went in a completely different direction.
I thought to myself if it's so easy to capture a planet through the eyepiece
of my manual telescope with a little point-and-shoot camera...
What's stopping me from photographing a galaxy or nebula.
I begin looking into what's needed to photograph a galaxy and suddenly
deep sky astrophotography became my new obsession.
Photographing our solar system neighbors took a back seat.
How could I let photographing planets fall so far down my interest list?
Well, that ends tonight.
I've got way better tools at my disposal now and I have so much more experience than I did back then.
I'm so (bleeping) excited. Here's the plan:
I'll use the Celestron Edge HD11 SCT.
The biggest, baddest telescope I have, with the most magnification, and widest aperture.
This telescope gives me nearly three thousand millimeters of focal length
to play with. So I can pull Jupiter in nice and close.
The telescope will slew and track Jupiter
via the equatorial telescope mount it's sitting on the Sky-Watcher EQ8-R Pro.
Instead of a regular telescope eyepiece at the back of the telescope,
I'm going to be using a dedicated planetary astrophotography camera.
It is the ZWO ASI462MC. This will allow me to capture full-color images in
one shot of this planet at a high frame rate.
I'll take short video clips of the planet Jupiter using the camera through the telescope...
and hope that I get enough good frames where there's less turbulence in the air.
Essentially, you take a video with lots of frames of the planet and just
extract the best ones where the planet looks the sharpest.
The software that I use to run the camera is called FireCapture,
and it's got some great tools for framing and focusing up the planet...
and of course, recording those videos.
It is a hot humid night here in the backyard as
you can see that moon is just trying to poke out from beneath the clouds.
Jupiter will be up soon after that, and hopefully,
I can get a clear patch of sky where I can take a short video on the planet.
I can hear someone laying down a thick bass line in the distance and it sounds like
Workin' for the Weekend by Loverboy.
They're a local Canadian band, well they're Canadian anyway,
so it might actually be Loverboy playing somewhere.
They're no Glass Tiger, but i'd go see 'em.
The best part about using an eyepiece to align the telescope mount first before you put the camera in
there is that you actually get a live real view of the planet yourself when lining things up.
Right now I've got Saturn in the eyepiece I'm going to call my wife out to come see it.
"Can you come see Saturn for a second? Rudy, you stay. I smell a skunk, you're not coming out."
"To the left of the moon there,
see it? That's where you're pointed. Now, look through the eyepiece."
"Never gets old, eh?"
Here's a live view look at the planet Jupiter through my telescope as it is
right now in the night sky
I can see it naked eye of course.
Look at that magnification look at the details on the surface of the planet.
The fifth planet from the sun the gas giant the largest planet in our solar system
It's just incredible to witness it at opposition
What a night!
I spent the next three hours taking pictures of Jupiter, thousands of them.
As each new frame came in, I couldn't help but think of how far I've come,
and how this hobby has shaped my life.
From the very first view of Jupiter through a telescope, I knew I had to show someone.
An inexplicable urge to share astronomy with others, even if they're not that interested.
These days, I get to have all of you guys watch my videos, and it feels amazing actually.
Maybe THIS was the urge that I felt that night.
To have THIS moment.