Jupiter In The Freezing Cold

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to take my telescope out, but tonight I braced the 16 degree F weather to see Jupiter.

Standing outside holding a metal telescope felt like death, so I only staid outside for one shot. I used my 10” dobsonian, 3x barlow lens, and ZWOAS290MC camera. My camera settings were 350 gain and 5ms shutter speed to try and get the most frames per second as possible. With planetary imaging more frames is usually best, so I’ve found lowering the shutter and cranking up the gain as much as is reasonable helps. I ended up taking 7000 frames, which might be a little long considering how fast Jupiter rotates, but it was worth a shot!

I used my normal processing method: stacking in autostakkert, then wavelet filtering in Registax, and finally some color and sharpness adjustments in google photos. This image looks like there could have been some alignment issues during stacking because it looks like the limb of the planet isn’t as sharp as I’d expect.

It may not be the best, but it was nice to get the telescope out, even if the yard looks like this right now!