Jupiter Rising

The local newspaper advised that Jupiter would be at its closest since 1963 -- a "mere" 368 million miles. Rising in the eastern sky, only the Moon itself would be brighter in the night sky.

Earlier this evening (Sept 19th), with a clear sky and Jupiter beckoning, I set up my Canon 7D and hooked in a 100-400 mm Canon telephoto with two multiplying teleconverters stacked in -- Canon 2.0 and 1.4 extenders -- giving me an apparent focal length of 1,792 mm with the 7D's crop factor of 1.6 factored in. A Marshall 7" HDMI LCD monitor was invaluable in both tracking this moving target as it migrated southward, and achieving as sharp a focus as possible. Since we are not in orbit with the Hubble telescope, a fair bit of fuzziness due to our not-so-clear atmosphere is apparent, but it's still possible to detect a gaseous band or two on Jupiter's surface.

Next I swung the lens towards the Moon -- much easier to spot and track due to its huge size and brightness. The major features of the Moon - its craters and "seas" are easily seen.

The resulting video clips were edited in Adobe's Premiere Pro CS5.

Music is "Arcadia" by Kevin Macleod.

Jupiter Rising from David Rilstone on Vimeo.

My inspiration/motivation for this post is thanks to Tom Guilmette

For those not familiar with his work, click on the hyperlink on his name above to visit his blog -- a huge variety of info on all things video. His work frequently finds him using the latest and greatest of the huge cameras at professional sport matches -- he had turned the lens of one of these monsters to the moon recently and tweeted about the short clip he got. Very impressive. And last night, with Jupiter rising in the eastern sky, no clouds, and an almost full moon to boot...... Thanks, Tom!