A couple of nights ago, I hit Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter is only about 25 degrees up at 1:00am, so its still a little fuzzy, but I got some decent pics nonetheless.
Attached are 2 pics of each, one with moons, one without. That night the moons of both planets were nice enough to line themselves up close to their planets. The closeups of the planets are at the same scale, about 650x magnification (half of that, digital), which is twice the theoretical maximum for my telescope. The pics with the planets and moons are composites - a series of longer exposure pics to get the moons and a series of shorter ones to get the moons.
For Saturn, the moons are, from left to right, Titan, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys. Titan is about mag 8, the others about mag 10, so that's pushing the limits of my telescope for a short exposure. If you look close in the closeup, the outer ring is transluscent and you can see the planet through it.
For Jupiter, the moons are, from left to right, Ganymede, Europa, Io, and Callisto. Obviously, these are much brighter (mag 5-6), so they came out much better. You can just see the great red spot rotating away, left of center. I think the darker spot in the middle of that band is an artifact - I had some major dust problems on something.
), but it does bring out the details.
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