Ancestors

Written by Christian Fröschlin on 2025-01-29 at 23:54

Time lapse of #Jupiter system in methane band covering one hour of real time. Data from two weeks ago just got around to processing. 18 x 350 x 200 ms CH4 in Celestron 8" at f/10.

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Toot

Written by Chancerubbage on 2025-01-30 at 22:54

@chrfrde @Nick_Stevens_graphics

I’ve never seen Jupiters moons in motion before, and I have to admit, I find the direction of their paths rather surprising and mildly chaotic. I assume they were captured but I figured there might be an orbital plane resonance shown.

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Descendants

Written by Christian Fröschlin on 2025-01-31 at 00:51

@Chancerubbage @Nick_Stevens_graphics

Due to clouds this was only a short segment which makes it harder to see the patterns. There is an overall rotation to the image that is an observer effect from Earth which makes it appear that moons move "sideways".

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Written by Christian Fröschlin on 2025-01-31 at 00:54

@Chancerubbage @Nick_Stevens_graphics

Correcting for that the moons move in a narrow band to the "east" and "west" of Jupiter. We see the system at about 3° inclination so the outer moons can appear to pass "above" or "below" jupiter.

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Written by Christian Fröschlin on 2025-01-31 at 00:56

@Chancerubbage @Nick_Stevens_graphics

The four galilean moons are definitely not captured they orbit in a common plane and also at regular resonances.

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Written by Christian Fröschlin on 2025-01-31 at 00:57

@Chancerubbage @Nick_Stevens_graphics

Even for the fast inner moon Io an orbit takes about three days so one hour is rather short.

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Written by Chancerubbage on 2025-01-31 at 02:24

@chrfrde @Nick_Stevens_graphics

Oh. So what moons (or background stars) are in this time lapse?

My optics aren’t much better than Galileo had

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Written by Christian Fröschlin on 2025-01-31 at 21:46

@Chancerubbage @Nick_Stevens_graphics

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Written by Chancerubbage on 2025-01-31 at 01:38

@chrfrde @Nick_Stevens_graphics

It is that in the movement of rotation, however oriented, they seemed to be heading at different vectors. Different directions even. Some could be headed in front or behind Jupiter. Not because of Jupiters visual angle per se. Probably because the orbits are more elliptical from our vantage point than I’ve seen them before with a short glance in infrequent casual observation. I just think ‘oh there’s some moons!’

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