I discovered this high resolution picture of Jupiter on Sunday. Then I prepared it for printing by padding it with black to a perfect square 2500x2500 px, centered the planet and enhanced the contrast a little. On monday I gave the file to a photo shop here for a 30x30 cm print and bought a light wood thin frame. Today I got the print and fitted it in the frame. Nice work on the photo shop side. Excelent print quality on matte paper, not the usual glossy type. I didn't even ask for special paper, but they guessed it right.
What I got is a nice looking high resolution picture of Jupiter in a frame. It's stunning detail. Collegues here asked if I'm in love with Jupiter. Yes I am. For those that don't know me well, in love with optics, astronomical stuff, networks, the rubik cube, hiking, my girlfriend and a lot of other stuff in no particular order. (Somebody's gonna kill me, I know).
backgrounder -
The Cassini spacecraft made some nice snapshots of Jupiter, while it was close to the gas giant some three years ago. In november last year the Cassini imaging team released the higherst resolution Jupiter portrait ever. Measuring 60km per pixel resolution or about 2300 pixels in diameter. The image is here.
Some poor souls out there will sure point out that this is only about 5 megapixels. The reason such an image cannot be acquired from Earth is both in the distance and atmospheric turbulance. Even HST cannot get a clear image of Jupiter with such high resolution. Being close around allowed Cassini's tiny astro camera to get a crisper image than even what Hubble is capable of getting from Earth orbit. One more reason for me to write a column about the megapixel myth, similar to the excelent collums here, here and here . I'll probably skip that one but, I'll defenitely write a guide to selecting a digital camera in a given price range.