Jupiter is the closet to Earth from 18th September till 24th September. It can be easily been spotted by naked eye. If someone has a binoculars or a small telescope, Jupiter's 4 Galilean Moons can be seen easily.
I shouldn't missed this great opportunity to photograph Jupiter with my own camera and lens. 400mm super zoom lens is good enough to photograph this giant gaseous planet and its moons with ease. The distance between Jupiter and Earth is shortest on 21st September 2010, but the weather is not that encouraging; raining whole day long, and even when the rain stops, thin layer of cloud is still overcast the heaven. However, being the next brightness object in the sky after the Moon, the cloud could not stop the light from Jupiter creeping through.
There was a small period of time when the cloud is thinnest and the rain stop at night, and the light pollution was minimal I could point my camera to the heaven to witness my very first time, to see the King of Planets of the Solar System. Quite disappointing to see through my 400mm lens that what I saw was only a small white dot, not quite I imagined as a clear picture of Jupiter with its red spot. Although disappointed, I continued my will of photographing Jupiter and let the camera do the job of capturing the light from heaven. To my surprised, not only Jupiter is enlarged in the photo from a small dot to a decent size, 4 of its 63 moons can be easily seen on LCD of my camera ! :D
What setting do I need? High ISO, big aperture and long exposure. Shutter speed less than 1 sec is ideal so not to encourage "star trail". Hence, high ISO and big aperture would compensate the limitation of the shutter speed. Closing down the aperture with provide a star flare effect.
Jupiter could still be seen by naked eye till October. This is my hope that the weather condition would be promising for astro-photography.
