Astronomy & Music: February 2015

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Orbital Crystals

I'm now calling these Orbital Crystals, being inspired by a friend who's into rock crystals. These images/structures I'm creating with the JPL Horizons data have similar characteristics:

1. They form regular patterns with occasional "flaws" that adds complexity to the piece
2. They take time to form

So the orbital crystal shown below is sort of a mind-bender. It is a plot of the angular distance (as seen from Earth) from Jupiter to Io in arc seconds (the x-axis) versus the angular distance (also as seen from Earth) from Jupiter to Europa in arc seconds (the y-axis), over the course of the year 2015. Time resolution is 1 hour, which means 8760 data points were used to make this plot.

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I also created another ribbon today using the orbits of Io and Europa. I played with the angles in gnuplot until it looked like something sort of interesting.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Seven Mutual Events At Jupiter

On the 9th of February 2015, there will be seven mutual events at Jupiter. This is the most number of mutual events this season, as far as I'm aware. All four Galilean moons will be at play.

05:26 - 05:29: Io occults Europa. Visibility for this event will be North and South America

05:32 - 05:34: Io eclipses Europa. Visibility for this event will also be North and South America

10:34 - 10:40: Ganymede occults Europa. Visible from western North America, all of the Pacific (including Hawaii), and some of east Asia.

10:47 - 10:50: Ganymede eclipses Europa. Also visible from western North America, all of the Pacific (including Hawaii), and some of east Asia.

13:33 - 13:41: Callisto eclipses Europa. Visible from the western Pacific, east Asia, and Australia.

20:56 - 21:01: Ganymede occults Io. Visible from west Asia, all of Europe, and all of Africa.

21:06 - 21:13: Ganymede eclipses Io. Also visible from west Asia, all of Europe, and all of Africa.

Dust off your photometers and take some data!

I'll post more information on my 'Jupiter Today' podcast for 2/9/2015.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYDhvZYNk09bE28HE1BI65w

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Five Mutual Events At Jupiter For Groundhog Day

Groundhog day is my fifth favorite day of the year, after the Solstices and Equinoxes.

On that day, the moons of Jupiter are involved in five "Mutual Events" which means that some kind of interaction (from Earth's point of view) goes on -- either one moon eclipsing or occultating another moon.

This is the most number of mutual events on a single day in this season on Jupiter (an equinox) sofar. More to come.

The maps of the Earth below shows the visibility of each event. The small dot in the center of the image marks the location on the Earth where Jupiter will be at the zenith at the time of the event.

All four moons are involved in these five events. Here are the details:

01:32-01:46 Ganymede eclipses Callisto. This is a 13.7 minute event