stella nix

First of all, an astrophoto of Jupiter from 2023 October 9, same as the sketch above: https://www.uriland.it/jupiter-9-october-2023-passo-coe/

It's so cool to see the same structures I recorded visually seen in an astrophoto I didn't find until today!

Here are two drawings of Jupiter taken just a couple nights apart in August 2021. The first was seen with a 6" aperture Dobsonian reflector telescope.

Note the two brown smudges on the north (bottom) equatorial belt. Those are transient weather phenomena known as brown barges, and on this particular occasion they were some absolute whoppers. It's fairly rare to actually resolve a brown barge in a telescopic view at least this easily. Note also that the pale zone in the equator is somewhat orangeish. During 2021-2022 or so Jupiter's equatorial zone took on that noticeably orange cast. Prior and afterwards it was pale white. Back in 2021 it reminded me a bit of images of Jupiter from the 1970s, it was a very 'retro' look for the planet.

I went back out two nights later. This time I used my 10" Dobsonian reflector. On paper this gives 67% better resolution and magnification compared to the 6". In practice you can't go too high because of atmospheric turbulence, but this was a particularly good night, so I observed at 300x, 75% higher magnification than the previous occasion.

This one really had me take my time. Between the orange equatorial zone, the same brown barges remaining visible, and the red spot, it's probably my favorite astronomical sketch of the planet.

Here's someone's astrophoto I found from the same night, probably taken at the same time that I was observing through my own telescope: https://www.compubuild.com/astro/jupiter2021.htm

Very rewarding to see such similar features.

I also wanna say I was not exaggerating the orange and dark red colors very much at all. Jupiter isn't really all that colorful for the past few years (at least, last I checked), so the orange color that year was really a treat.

These sketches were done early morning a few months earlier, before the planets were visible in the evening skies. I got up early to use my 5" Zhumell Z130 reflector, and found Jupiter (the brighter of the two planets) without issue. When I was finished observing and sketching it, I went to find Saturn, which became something of a problem. At this point the Sun had technically risen. There was no finderscope attached. I had to perform a naked-eye sighting of dim little Saturn during the 'day' in order to point my telescope at it. It wasn't easy, but I was proud when I'd finally found it.

Finally, here's some sketches of Jupiter and Saturn from my first personal astronomy log book, without any colorizing or space-black.