Get this image in print here: https://t.co/HVzmViiABn
— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) December 8, 2022
Here's how it looked at roughly 5x speed. It was over very quickly. I had multiple telescopes running to make sure I had a good shot for you:https://t.co/jc5XeP9d49
From a few months ago, "How I Learned to Explore the Universe":
Turns out, the trick to photographing planets is something called "lucky imaging". What you have to do is take thousands of pictures of something over the course of a few minutes, and then stack them with software and it makes the image wayyy clearer. This is due to the atmosphere, when you're that zoomed in through miles of atmosphere, it ripples with the currents, destroying your image. The software analyzes the images looking for the ones where this effect is the least pronounced, then stacks and sharpens them, revealing an image that is not just good, but better than what your eyes can even see (although on a clear night, your eyes can see incredible detail). I followed this process, and my images were much better (although it took a while to really get the hang of it.