Well, it was a pretty decent year for Jupiter, Saturn and Mars approaching in turn at our latitudes
This image has one frame per month for each planet. Each one grows and shrinks as they approach Earth in turn - Jupiter in early May, Saturn in June, and Mars in July. Shadows and phases shift from pointing to the right early in the year, to pointing to the left after each planet reaches opposition. The closer the planet, the more dramatic the variation in size.
Just as Mars gets big, a global dust storm blankets the planet in June, then features slowly emerge through July and August as the storm begins to subside. Remarkable bright polar storms have been a feature on Saturn since April. Unfortunately some bad luck has meant my July & August Saturns are a bit fuzzier! There's always lots of lovely storm action on Jupiter, including this year the demise of the South Tropical Disturbance near the Great Red Spot. Ganymede sneaks into March and June's shots.
Jared - it's actually a really rather old Meade Series 4000 2x Barlow I got as a teenager in 1994. Given how much it's been bashed about/abused, the coatings must be shot (though the glass is fairly clean), but it still performs well. Am not sure how much a new Barlow would improve the images (!) except I'd actually quite like something that increased the focal length a little less for ideal image scale (the image train is operating at near 9.2m f.l. just now).
pretty cool! Mars' southpole ice is receding fast. Made me cycle through Sebbie's Mars shots over the past 4 months and read a little on Wiki about seasons in a 25 degree tilt, CO2 dry ice cover subliming within days during spring/summer and exposing water ice, which, when it melts, sublimes as well due to low atmospheric pressure. Very interesting. Thank you!