Apr 152017
I reconfigured the PTO with the planetary camera to get some pictures of Jupiter mid way through the 2017 apparition. My schedule, the full Moon and the weather finally allowed imaging on Thursday the 13th. The delay put Jupiter six days past opposition. However, the weather did more than delay the imaging session. It also cleaned and calmed down the atmosphere. During focusing it was apparent that the ‘seeing’ on Thursday made it one of the better nights. I don’t have a seeing monitor yet so I don’t have any empirical data to support that estimate, but it sure looked like one of the better nights.
Jupiter and Io
After a couple of quick test shots I set up to take a 60 second video every 10 minutes. This is one of the first in the series. It shows Jupiter and its closest large moon Io (eye-Oh).
According to Greek mythology Io was a mortal woman that the Roman god, Jupiter romanced. Once Juno, Jupiter’s wife, found out about the affair she turned Io into a cow.
Jupiter and no Io
The second image is about 2 hours 30 minutes later. Jupiter rotates one full revolution on its axis in 9 hours 55 minutes so the planet has, by now, noticeably rotated. Cloud formations on the left edge on the first image are now well right of center on the second. Also, by then, Io has continued on its orbit and moved off the right edge of the image.
Both of these images have been submitted to NASA’s JunoCam web page to support the Juno mission.