Jupiter is the largest planet of the Solar system – it is over 1300 times heavier than Earth and its surface area is over 120 times larger than our planet. It is the giant gas planet that contains mostly hydrogen and helium and it makes it similar in composition to the stars. There are four large Jovian satellites known as Galilean moons (that have been discovered by Galileo) but the total number of currently known satellites is 67.
The picture below has been recorded on March, 14th and it is my first color picture of Jupiter. The technique of picturing planets differs from deeps sky objects – we use high focal length and high magnification and record the actual movies of the planet. Then using dedicated software we select the best quality frames of the movies and stack them into single image. The tubulences in the Earth atmosphere is the main reason for degrading planet images quality.
Pictures from the left are: RRGB composite, and separate R, G and B channels. Each frame has been created from about 300 single frames selected from 2000 frames movies recorded with average fps 35. The effective focal length of the setup was 2260mm.
Why birthday? Because today is my birthday 🙂