In Summer 2020 Jupiter and Saturn were approaching mutual conjuction that was to occur a few months later. Although prominent for naked eye observers, the low altitude to the south was not really inviting amateur astronomers for an attempt to capture the details of the gas giants' atmosphere. Elevations of just around 20 degrees above horizon did not raise expectations about good imaging results.

That's why I did not make the effort to shuffle my 8" scope including all of the heavy equipment into my car and go out of the city to make advanced observations. But on a cozy evening in August, when the sky was quite clear and the air seemed to be steady, I just set up my mount on my balcony in Stadlau, Vienna, loaded it with my seasoned 80mm refractor and tested my planetary video camera which I became a bit unfamiliar with. You may remember, I switched to my DSLR camera for the Venus pictures earlier this year because of the troubles my planetary camera software made. So after successfully testing the improved software I just kept darting at Jupiter because the air remained steady enough to obtain a rewarding output. And indeed it was rewarding.

The largest planet of our solar system was facing the most prominent view to earth, which is the longitude with the "Great Red Spot". This extraterrestial hurricane with wind speeds of up to 700 km/h and a scale of more than twice the size of planet earth persists in the Jovian weather sceanrio for definitely more than 150 years. Even older observations from the early years ot telescopic observations may be related to an independent phenomenon or to the varying colour of the GRS throughout the centuries...