Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. The planet is 11 earth diameters wide. To give an idea of the size of the planet, the great red spot, visible in some of the images below could easily fit the earth within it. It is about 5 times further from the Sun that we are here on planet earth. It takes about forty minutes on average for the light from Jupiter to reach our eyes.
Jupiter is probably my favourite planet to observe, this is because it looks different from day to day, and year to year, there is always something happening on the planet.

Opposition 2006

Click here, or on the image opposite to see my images from the Jupiter opposition 2006.
This year Jupiter only reaches an altitude of about 20 degrees at best. As a result I have to be more creative with IR filters etc, to combat the poor seeing conditions.

Opposition 2005

Click here, or on the image opposite to see my images from the Jupiter opposition 2005.

I'm rather pleased with the images I managed to get this year. Jupiter was reasonably high in the sky and my imaging abilities have improved a  bit.

Opposition 2004

Click here, or on the image opposite to see my images from the Jupiter opposition 2004.

I managed some reasonable images this year - but I have no details about them because my PC chose to run scandisk and rename every file on the hard-drive. Though I did recover some files - I lost all the time and date information.

1998

Click here or on the image to see some images from 1998.

At this time I experimented by pointing an analogue camcorder into the eyepiece of the telescope. Since then video imaging of planets has become the way to image planets. I have used Registax to process these very jumpy videos. They aren't great, but they are the best ones I have from 1998.