Amateur astronomers in Central Queensland's Gemfields, Anthony
Wesley and Phil Miles, are two of about 50 in the world doing
the work they do.
Every night, they're in their own backyard observatories,
taking photos and tracking changes on the planets.
I'm an amateur astronomer, and this beast beside me here is my
pride and joy.
So, I spent a lot of time after dark, looking up at the sky,
mostly looking at the planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
It's got it's own name.
When they're that big, as an amateur telescope, you're
allowed to give them a name so I've called it the Gemeye
because we're in the Gemfields.
Anthony Wesley moved to the small town of Rubyvale from
Canberra three years ago, for its pleasant weather and clear
skies.
Rubyvale is on the Tropic of Capricorn.
We have the planets directly overhead in winter.
And the higher up the planets are in the sky, and preferebly
straight up overhead, the clearer the view that you get.
The former computer programmer received high praise from
professionals for his astrophotography last year, when
he captured a historic planetary event through his homemade
telescope.
A change in Jupiter's centuries-old storm, the Great
Red Spot.
It went through this phase, which nobody ever seen before,
where it suddenly started misbehaving, I guess is the way
you'd say it.
Instead of it being a nice compact storm, it started
changing shape and there was some material that came off and
came back in and it really looked like it was unstable last
year.
So there was a period of time when everybody was wondering
what was going to happen, is it is it going to break up and
disperse?
Is going to shrink or get bigger?
After a few months of watching it, it did get smaller, by quite
a noticeable amount, and then it's just settled down again.
But even so, this last year through to this year, it's still
showing signs of not being, you know, a hundred percent back to
it's old self.
So, amateur astronomers and professional astronomers are
watching very closely to see what it might do next.
Just this week, amateur astronomers and professionals
across the globe noticed another change on Jupiter.
One of the amateurs and a professional found a new storm.
And you can see on there that there's a bright spot which is a
new storm, which has occurred in the northern area of Jupiter.
So we're all madly trying to image it.
As you can see, it's showing up there and it's quite possible
that it will get bigger and it will move across Jupiter at
quite a speed.
There may be more behind it.
So yes, we're all very excited.
When something like that happens on a major planet we're all
jumping around for joy.
These things don't happen very often.
This sort of storm has happened in 2012 and I think in 2016.
So it just shows how dynamic the planets are.
This is a gass planet and it just shows you that storm is
probably the size of Australia.
So it's very significant.
This storm is brand new, and combined with the amateurs and
professionals, we'll understand in a week or two, we'll
understand quite a lot about what's going on with it.
To Australian astronomers, August is the best month of the
year to look up the sky, when the solar system's largest
planets, Jupiter and Saturn, are clearly on display.
It's very accessible for anyone who's interested in the night
sky, interested in the planets, its as easy as going outside.
You don't even need to go to a dark sky, a dark site, you can
just do it in your backyard.
If they just go out at about nine o'clock at night and look
up in the sky, you can't miss them.
Jupiter and Saturn are too bright.
They look like two bright stars.
The planets are the things that I look at the most and they're
so rewarding because they, with a large telescope, you can see
the atmospheres and the planets, you can see how they changed
from one night to the next.
You can see lots of detail on the planets and every night you
see something different.
I've done lots of exciting things, as most people have in
their lives, and I find that this is probably the most
exciting thing I've ever done in my life.
Because you can sit there and be looking at a planet and all of a
sudden something will happen.