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Jupiter - 'The Movie' By Rick Bria


This is a Movie of 20 separate frames taken of Jupiter on November 5, 1999 from 1:12 to 4:14 UT (that's November 4, 8 to 11pm eastern time to normal folk). A QuickCam CCD camera was used to capture Jupiter video, and then the best frames were digitally 'stacked'. Over 6000 images had to be inspected (my mouse clicking finger almost gave out). Each frame is a stack of 8 images. South is up. The moons IO and Ganymede and their shadows can be seen transiting the planet's disk. Ganymede is the white spot seen transiting near Jupiter's South Pole. It can be seen all the way across. IO transits in the south equatorial belt. It can only be seen as it exits Jupiter's limb. Of course both of the moons shadows, being black, are easily seen.

Some things to note in the movie are:
  1. IO obviously orbits faster than Ganymede. This makes sense because IO is much closer to Jupiter than Ganymede.
  2. The shadow of Ganymede seems to be causing a thin white band to form up near the South Pole. I don't know if this is just a coincidence or it is real, but it is interesting just the same.

I've learned a lot from making mistakes while doing this movie, and hope to do even better when the Earth catches up to Jupiter next year!