Photo of the Week for July 21, 2017

The Jupiter observing season is slowly winding down with the planet now roughly 30 degrees above the southwest horizon at dusk and setting at midnight. Even so, Big Jove remains a good telescopic target with its array of four bright moons and famous Great Red Spot—made all the more famous thanks to newly released images from the Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft. Although not quite up to Juno-level quality, this June 5, 2017, photo of the planet by Etobicoke, Ontario, imager Steve Platsis does a nice job of conveying Jupiter’s appearance in a moderate-sized telescope under good conditions—something the Juno images can’t do.

Steve used a Celestron 9.25-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO ASI120MC camera for this Jupiter portrait.