Contains:  Solar system body or event
New Jupiter (11/4/2021 MDT) compared to previous Jupiter  (9/17/2021), Steve Lantz

New Jupiter (11/4/2021 MDT) compared to previous Jupiter (9/17/2021)

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

The new image here is from 11/4/2021 MDT and, by chance, has the GRS in a very similar position to its position in a previous image taken on 9/17/2021.  One of the reasons that Jupiter is so much fun to image and study is the constant changes going on in its atmosphere.  I placed the two images side-by-side so that changes between the two dates are quite easy to see.  First of all, the features themselves morph over time, including some that appear and others that disappear.  Second, Jupiter has differential rotation in its cloud layers.  Within +/- 10 degrees of the equator (System I), Jupiter rotates once in 9 h 50 m whereas outside of this latitude band (System II) it rotates once in 9 h 55 m.  Thus System I features run ahead of System II features over time.  And third, there is evident limb darkening in the new image.  The previous image was taken when Jupiter was about a month past opposition, the alignment at which  the sun-earth-Jupiter angle is 180 degrees and Jupiter's disk is fully illuminated like the full moon.  The new image, however, is a week away from Jupiter lying at eastern quadrature, where the sun-earth-angle is 90 degrees and Jupiter lies east of the sun.  This kind of alignment is what gives us the first quarter moon, with the moon reaching its highest point in the sky at sunset.  Similarly, Jupiter right now is very close to its highest point in the sky at sunset.  However, its disk is much more than half lit because it lies so far away and our orbit is so much smaller.  In fact, the actual portion of Jupiter's disk that is shaded fully is never more than about 1 percent and an observer looking through a telescope could not see this darkening. Still, the eastern limb appears to be darkened in the image due to enhancement  by image processing.

The new image was a processed stack of 10 % of 31 30-sec videos at 80 fps (about 7400 frames stacked).  The seeing was mediocre (big surprise for Denver).

Comments

Histogram

New Jupiter (11/4/2021 MDT) compared to previous Jupiter  (9/17/2021), Steve Lantz