Take a look at the planet and see how many of the reddish cloud bands you can pick out on Jupiter’s surface.

At the top of the planet you can see some light red fringing and on the bottom, a little blue fringing is visible. This is caused by the Jupiter’s light refracting like a prism through the Earth’s atmosphere. This happens when a planet is low in the sky, the light has to travel through much more of the Earth’s atmosphere compared to when it is high in the night sky. When the planet is close to the horizon, as Jupiter is now, it is more difficult to see detail through the thicker turbulent atmosphere.

FS-152 refractor, and a Nikon D300. Image processing RegiStax 4.0, and Capture NX 2.01. the seeing was not very good.

PTG 2008