I bet you're pretty tired of just seeing little pinpoints of light, I mean I would be.
So tonight, let's take a look at Jupiter's moons.
Here's tonight's image:
I'm still trying to figure out the best way to take these pictures. I bumped up the ISO tonight, but got too much noise.
I'll try some other settings later.
Tonight we take a look at Io:
Thank you to the NOAA for that image of Io.
Io is named after a some girl Jupiter fell for. Unfortunately, he had to turn her into a cow to prevent his wife, Hera from finding out about his thing on the side.
Io is the closest of the Galilean moons to Jupiter's surface. It's also pretty close to another moon, Europa.
Because of this, there is a sort of gravitational tug of war with Io in the middle so the moon is volcanically active. It's sort of interesting for Io is on the short list of places in the solar system that aren't just cold and dead.
Not the sort of place you'd like to visit though.
Probably singe your eyebrows.
Io is about the same size as our Moon.
If you got a scope bigger than mine, you may be able to see Io cast it's shadow across the surface of Jupiter as it transits the planet.
Not sure how big a scope you need, but I would think 8" would about do it.
There you have Io.
Huh?
The bonus?
Oh!
Well, it's not really a bonus.
I finally found the Andromeda galaxy and got an image:
Really not much to see except for some puffy looking thing, but it's still pretty cool.
Andromeda is the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way. It's a spiral galaxy about 2.9 million light years away and as I said earlier, it's visible to the naked eye with a dark sky.
Imagine that!
A whole freakin different galaxy!
Maybe someone from there is looking at the Milky Way, wondering if anyone else is out there.
To find Andromeda, I suggest a star chart or something. You can find one on the webs if your interest is peaked.
I think it's worth hunting for, at the very least you can make your friends think you've turned into a nerd.
Okay, Jupiter factoid:
Io takes 42.5 hours to complete one orbit of Jupiter.
2 comments:
Cool Jupiter shots. As for Andromeda, that looks like a quick touch of the airbrush in Photoshop! I shall have to get that star chart and find a place where it's really DARK.
Steve A, I wish PS could help enhance Andromeda, but the resolution is limited by the size of my scope. Still, it's pretty cool to see.
Even in binoculars, it looks better than my pics!
Post a Comment