Jupiter Posing

Neither of my telescopes are particularly suited to planetary observation, the focal lengths are a bit too short really but sometimes the planets are just to tempting to ignore, especially when they are at "Opposition" (the time in the year when a given planet is opposite the sun in the sky and therefore at its closest approach).  Such was the situation for Jupiter last month so I took this image of the King of the Planets:

I am very pleased with the outcome!

I should point out that this is not a single frame snapshot.   This picture was produced by combining several hundred frames extracted from a video and combined to produce a much sharper image than could ever be achieved with a single frame. 

First and most obvious thing to notice is the colour banding: the equatorial, tropical and temperate bands are all clearly visible along with the "Festoons" which are the the crenelations visible along the contacts between the light and dark bands.  These Festoons are essentially storm systems and occasionally they develop into full blown cyclone storms, the most famous of which is the Great Red Spot which I think is the dark spot in the upper left quadrant of the planet.

Some of you may be thinking that the GRS is in the southern equatorial belt, why is it in the upper section of the planet?  That is because my telescopes invert up and down, so Jupiter's South pole is at the top of the image! It would of course be very easy to flip the image over but I like to preserve the view through the eyepiece :)