Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Jupiter, Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Uranus from Santiago de Compostela

This may not look like much, but it took a fair few shots to capture it. Jupiter at the moment is one of the brightest objects in the sky, rising around sunset and shining through the night, it's currently the closest it's been to us for almost 50 years. I've caught Jupiter with the four major moons before, but this shot was a bit special. When I enhanced the image, a bright green spot jumped out. I knew what it was having seen on Stellarium a few days earlier what else was in the sky, but I double checked to make sure that I'd really captured the very faint image of Uranus around 2 billion kilometers away from us, just to the top left of the Jovian system. Here's the result (my photo on the right) as compared with Stellarium (on the left):

Jupiter and its moons with Uranus

Here's another image from the same set of shots, but at a different setting on the camera, such that I could get the moons in better resolution. Here's Callisto, Europa, Io, Jupiter and Ganymede
Jupiter and moons

1 comment:

John | English Wilderness said...

Fantastic, it gives me hope that I'll be able to catch a glimpse of Uranus too. Right now I'm off to recheck my Jupiter pics just in case!