Triple APOD - September 3, 2024: Jupiter and the Great Red Spot by Tim Black
The Great Red Spot is a persistent storm on Jupiter, being noted since at least the year 1831. It is easily Jupiter's most famous feature, and although it's still at least 1.3 Earth diameters wide, it's actually been shrinking! The earliest photographs of Jupiter from the late 1800's during the dawn of astrophotography showed a storm almost four times wider than it is today. Despite this, the GRS is still recognizable even in small telescopes under good conditions, and is therefore a good benchmark for beginners in planetary astrophotography. Getting an image as detailed as Tim's in todays AAAPOD, however, is not so easy. Tim used a Celestron 180mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope, a ZWO ASI-120MC camera, and lucky imaging techniques to extract as much detail as possible.
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