Triple Eclipse on Jupiter 13
An anonymous reader writes "The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of a rare triple eclipse. Three of Jupiter's three big moons--Io, Ganymede and Callisto--eclipsed large portions of face of the giant planet. Such an event happens about once a decade."
The Rare Five-Spotted Jupiter (Score:4, Funny)
Obscurus Celestialis
"A giant creature prone to residing in dark, cold habitats, the rare Five-Spotted Jupiter is identifiable in the wild by its obvious bright stripes that take on a pastel hue under infrared light. Known to attract small creatures (like the Pizza Faced Io) that fly around it, as well as moving in large circles at very high speed, the identifing features of Celestialis can only be easily seen using a high-speed camera taking rapid fire exposures..."
Those aren't moons!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Those aren't moons!!! (Score:3, Funny)
That's no moon... (Score:2)
Actual pictures (Score:1)
A minor nit ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The article also says "They then combined the images into one single picture to show more details of the planet and its moons" ... maybe I should send 'em my Hulk Lunar Eclipse Pictures [komar.org] since it would be cute to combine the Big Green Guy with the Big Gas Giant.
Re:A minor nit ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A minor nit ... (Score:4, Interesting)
EARTH (90 degree on "side" of the Sun)
SUN_____________________________________JUPITER
Re:A minor nit ... (Score:2)
earth-sun distance = 1 AU
min jupiter-sun distance = ~5 AU
e
1|
s---------j
5
So we see:
e
j
while what's lit is:
|
s j
|
The portion we can't see would be
just angle j in the first diagram.
Some simple trig gives us:
sin j = 1/sqrt(26)
Assuming all my math is right, j = 12 degrees. So worst case we can't see 12 degrees of Jupiters lit surface. What percentage of the surface that is is left as an excersize to
smiley (Score:1, Funny)
Where's a supreme being when you need one? (Score:5, Funny)
Large portions? (Score:2, Informative)
Did anyone look at the pictures before they wrote this? "teeny-weeny portions of the face of the giant planet" might be more appropriate. The red spot was many times larger than the eclipse shadow.