Last week I treated myself to a new camera. It is a 10MP Canon SX120 IS. The camera has a really nice 10x optical zoom and image stabilization ($200 at your local Walmart ;)).

I have been testing it out on a number of different subjects (airplanes, nature, etc etc). Tonight I thought I would see if the camera could resolve Jupiter & some of it's moons.. and indeed, it can!

This is the full 10mp shot reduced to 800x600..


Not too impressive but if we take a 100% scale crop we get the following:



You can see Ganymede very clearly (about 4'oclock from Jupiter's disc). Callisto is further out to the left of Jupiter at 10 o'clock, and Europa is identifiable right at the edge of Jupiter's disc in line with Ganymede (without planetarium software I wouldn't have identified it as anything more than an optical anomaly at the edge of the bright halo around Jupiter which is over-exposed)..

Here is a desaturated and labeled version:


Not bad results for a small hand held camera. I supported it on the edge of the observatory wall as I took the shot. ISO 800, 1sec exposure.

I don't see the "monolith" anywhere...

It's lost in the halo.. I'll work harder on my exposure settings next time .

Nice photos, I have been Jupiter watching with an old pair of Navy binoculars, 8X50, propped up on my truck roof to steady it. An added treat this week was an accidental sighting of the shuttle and ISS flying tandem, I watched while they faded to orange, and blinked out. They were high enough to still be in the setting sun, while it was dark down here. Later that evening I got the NASA email listing flyby times. The next night I almost missed them, just made it out and called my wife so we both got to see them.

Wow, that's incredible... must be *really* dark where you take these photos, or (I think) the moons would be washed out.
I have a Panasonic DMC-FZ28, 18x optical zoom, and image stabiliser. Will try this myself if I'm back in Holland (Shanghai has way too many light pollution - most evenings I don't see any stars at all). Any special settings I need to use? Longer exposure / small diaphragm?

What's that dark spot on Jupiter?

Great post.

I wish i had the patience/budget/lack of overcast/wooly mittens to get into this sort of stuff.

I just see a bright light.

RB, in that case you need to increase the brightness of your monitor. The moons are rather dim and blurry, but they are there. I may give this another try with the camera mounted on a tripod..

My monitor is pretty bright.

Then something is wrong with it - I'm using a very cheap Viewsonic LCD monitor from 2007 and can see the moons just fine (that is, yes I would not have seen them had they not been pointed out, but otherwise they're definitely visible).

I can assure you my contrast ratio specs are pretty dismal by todays (or probabably even 2007) standards.