First Pictures of Jupiter!

We got our first pictures of Jupiter!!

Before I get into the details of our observing run, I must describe the buildup. We began our day with another early road trip; this one however would be one of the best of my life. As we left Tucson and approached the mountain I began to get butterflies in my stomach much like a child on Christmas morning, I would describe the feeling as almost giddy. We were approaching the climax of our trip. The view from the base of the mountain was amazing and sparked thoughts of the days when explorers trekked over them.

As we made our way up the skinny treacherous road I almost felt dizzy from all of the twisting and winding but nothing could deter my excitement. Higher and higher we wove our way up the mountain and the view only got better as we went. As we approached the peak we made two stops, one at an old Japanese internment camp and the other at a nice sightseeing spot. the interment camp was incredibly powerful and eye opening. We learned that the road we took to the peak of the mountain was laid completely by the Japanese prisoners whom used crude tools and outdated methods, due to lack of effort by the US government to provide adequate funding. They laid 30 miles of mountainous road this way.

The sightseeing spot was equally as powerful as the internment camp but because of the peacefulness of the place instead of the horror. We had almost a 360 degree view of the city and the desert plains below, it was amazing. Here is one of the pictures I took at this stop:

 

Once we arrived at the Steward Observatory we had a quick tour of our living facilities and the Kuiper Telescope then it was off to work. The telescope we are using is HUGE!! here are two pictures of it, the first is a profile of the telescope:

The second is of the 61 inch mirror which provides us the ability to look into space and get sharp images:

As we began our work we learned how to aim the telescope and properly prepare the observatory for finding objects in the night sky. Our job (Coty, Ryan, and I) was to find Jupiter and record short burst videos with our Flee3 HD Camera. These videos would then be analyzed and compiled frame by frame using the program RegiStax to find the best frames. The best frames are picked out and compiled (stacked on top of each other) to create one sharp image. Here I have to give mad props to Zach for compiling all of our raw data in a speedy fashion. My specific job tonight was to manually focus the telescope as to get the sharpest image, it was quite tedious. In the end it was incredibly rewarding, the shots we got were amazing for our first attempts as true astronomers. I will include two of the Jupiter pictures here:

This is one of the better compiled pictures we created.

Here in the second one you can see the great red spot! (it is in the middle near the lower third of the planet)