Photo of the Week for May 17, 2019

One of the great delights of observing and imaging Jupiter is that the planet often undergoes rapid, dramatic changes—it’s never the same from one apparition to the next. As the photo above (captured on April 30, 2019) shows, Jupiter’s equatorial zone is quite dark and sports an orangey-brown colour, while the south tropic zone (the prominent white band) is unusually broad. Both these regions are markedly different from their appearance a year ago. Who can say how the planet will look by the end of its current showing?

This remarkably detailed Jupiter portrait was created by Ontario astrophotographer Manuel Guerrero while on an imaging expedition to Isla Barú, Colombia (latitude 10° north), where the planet reaches an altitude greater than 55° in the predawn hours. Manuel used a Celestron C14-AF XLT 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (fitted with a Tele Vue 2× Powermate Barlow lens), a QHY290M monochrome planetary camera, and a set of Optolong RGB and IR filters to obtain the data for this image.