Last night I tried to take pictures of Jupiter through my spotting scope again. A few days ago, I had pretty good luck getting the moons around Jupiter, but I wanted to try and get the cloud bands on the planet itself. I didn't have the best of luck. I was out at Mr. Neil's with Lorraine, Non Birding Bill stayed home. I spent the night because I needed to grab some beehive frames and take them to a Twin Cities nature center today so they can be used for programs. The center does a honey extraction program this time of year and they didn't have enough frames for demonstration, so I was glad we could loan a few to help them out. Not only are we helping a friend, but someone else will extract our honey for us--that's a win-win if you ask me.

So, I set up my scope on Jupiter and enjoyed the fall night--the heavy smell of pine, the quiet peeps of small birds migrating in the night...and the few random wood frogs giving it one last go before the cold forces them underground. The above photo made the planet look more like cell division rather than Jupiter. That was from hand holding the camera, so I tried using the timer on the camera while it was attached to the scope to reduce shake.