I had the same awe-inspiring (yet miserable compared to Rich’s experience) view of Saturn when I got home tonight. The haze quickly obscured it once again, and it was time for Jupiter-watching.

10:20pm

While Rich turned his scope toward Jupiter, I set up my camera on a second tripod. I was easily able to find Jupiter but I could not see the moons. I took a photo anyway and let the camera do what it wished, just to see what the results would be. Autofocus and a 7-second exposure didn’t work all that well! I did expect to see streaks since we currently have no way to compensate for our planet’s rotation, but I’m wondering if we can shorten them a bit. Rich’s experimentation with manual focus brought us a slight improvement: sharper streaks! Rejoice! They may be awful, but it’s still a real thrill to have taken my own first photos of Jupiter, Callisto and Ganymede.

Through the scope, we noticed that it was the best night yet. We could see the bands sharp and clear, with no shimmer, and the moons were all very bright.

Trees hid the moon at this time, but we experimented anyway and got a potentially useful result … more experimentation to follow.

3:40am (Wednesday)

A clear sky provided us with a very pretty view!