Why does Jupiter appear white through my Celestron 130EQ telescope?

[Waddensky]

3 hours ago, POANDY said:

So, now I want a closer image of Jupiter.  If I use my 3x Barlow and a 13mm eyepiece, I should get a greatly increased image of the planet itself, right?

Yup, and also a greatly increased image of the turbulence of the atmosphere 😉. Most likely a 3x barlow is too much, but experiment a bit to find the sweet spot for the night. Jupiter never fills the field of view but can take quite a bit of magnification on a good night. Good luck!

[Pixies]

8 hours ago, POANDY said:

When I saw the moons, I thought it was a distortion in the image!!

That's exactly what happened to me when I first view Jupiter through binoculars. I thought they were some kind of internal reflections.

[JOC]

The pictures on the first page of this thread are well worth a look for anyone having problems - it should be possible for most folks to get somewhat close to what is shown, seeing conditions permitting.

 The definitive text on collimation is from astrobaby http://www.astro-baby.com/astrobaby/help/collimation-guide-newtonian-reflector/

It does work, even I succeeded, but you have to carry out every little step no matter how daft it may sound.  

[POANDY]

21 hours ago, Waddensky said:

Yup, and also a greatly increased image of the turbulence of the atmosphere 😉. Most likely a 3x barlow is too much, but experiment a bit to find the sweet spot for the night. Jupiter never fills the field of view but can take quite a bit of magnification on a good night. Good luck!

....a greatly increased image of THE EARTH'S atmosphere....???  Not Jupiter's I'm assuming.

I really appreciate all the comments and suggestions, people!

I don't know if the more experienced members of this forum remember their initial frustration getting these things figured out, but I have had a terrible time....virtually worthless instruction manual supplied with scope, and some truly confusing videos on the web have caused me to doubt my sanity a few times over the last few weeks.

This has been very helpful.

Thanks!!!

[Moonshane]

It's all part of the initiation process to see if you can stand hours in the cold staring at one object 😂😂

[Nigeyboy]

Here is how Jupiter looked for me last night. Single shot on my iPhone held at the eyepiece. Visually, I could see just a couple of faint cloud bands.

 

[John]

Mobile phone images of Jupiter invariably over-expose the planet so the features that can be seen quite well with the eye at the eyepiece vanish in the glare.

With a 90mm mak-cassegrain at around 120x a few nights back I could see 4 cloud belts and some festoons coming off the northern equatorial belt and into the pale equatorial zone. A couple of nights earlier, with my ED120 refractor I could see the Great Red Spot sitting in the center of the disk embedded in the South Equatorial Belt.

Here is a nice image of Jupiter (not mine) showing the various features to look out for:

[Nigeyboy]

3 minutes ago, John said:

Mobile phone images of Jupiter invariably over-expose the planet so the features that can be seen quite well with the eye at the eyepiece vanish in the glare.

Yep  - spot on. I never expected the phone to pick up detail in the planet. Was mostly to show my other half when came back in! Jupiter is over some neighbours roofs at the moment, so get the added heat shimmer from those which doesnt add to the view I can see!

[Zakalwe]

An image taken with a camera phone will always be over-exposed as the imaging system in the camera will be using the whole frame (or a large part of it) to set the exposure level. As most of the image will be black the camera will set an exposure based on that, which naturally overexposes the small percentage of the image that contains Jupiter. The same will happen with a DSLR unless you change the settings to use spot metering. You are telling the camera to set the exposure only on a small area (normally one of the auto-focus points) and ignore the rest of the frame.

https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/basics/18/01.htm

[John]

Another interesting challenge is that it is possible to discern the identities of the moons by their apparent disk sizes. Although very tiny, they do show some variation if you focus sharply and the largest, Ganymede, has an apparent diameter noticeably larger than the others if you look closely.