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.

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

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

View from Earth

Visible in Europe, Africa, some of South America

03:29-03:33 Io occults Europa.  This is a 3.6 minute event

View from Earth

Visible in Africa, North America, South America

07:53-07:59 Ganymede occults Europa.  This is a 5.7 minute event

View from Earth

Visible in North America, South America

18:17-18:24 Ganymede eclipses Io.  This is a 7.2 minute event

View from Earth

Visible in Asia, Australia, and some of Europe

18:32-18:37 Ganymede occults Io.  This is a 5.3 minute event.

View From Earth

Visible in Asia, Australia, and some of Europe

Send your images and data to jupitertoday AT gmail DOT com

Color Adds Depth

This is using the same data as in my last post, but just colorized.  It adds a nice sense of depth.  I'll have to play with different colors as time goes on.  But for now, the default ones:

Jupiter Moon Orbit Ribbons February 2015

Here are the orbit ribbons for Jupiter's moons for February 2015:

Io - Europa

Io - Ganymede

Io - Callisto

Europa - Ganymede

Europa - Callisto

Ganymede - Callisto

Io - Europa - Ganymede - Callisto

Connecting The Dots

The past few days I've been completely taken over by the artistry and beauty I'm seeing in the orbital structures I've been creating.  This project has exploded very much out of proportion and I see no end to it.

It started with asking the question: "what does the pattern look like if I find the positions of two solar system bodies (relative to the sun) and draw a line between them at the same moment in time?"  The result of that can be seen in my Jupiter-Earth "spirograph" I put in my previous post.

Now it's gotten much more complex and interesting....

First, the plots:

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 1 shows lines drawn at 15 minute intervals between Io and Ganymede over the course of 24 hours.  The blue lines indicate the paths of the orbits, and the black dot is the location of Jupiter.

Figure 2 is when it starts getting complex and interesting.  I've once again plotted the path of Io's orbit around Jupiter.  The other blue line represents the vector distance between Ganymede and Io.  I then connect these two lines to give the figure presented.

Figure 3 is simply the combination of the two.

I have yet to figure out how to interpret these images.  Sofar it's all I can say is that if you look at Figure 4, I've marked A1, B1, A2, and B2.  As you can see, the distance and angle between A1 and B1 is the same as those between A2 and B2.  This goes, I think, for the entire plot.  All of this makes perfect sense but I have no idea if there is any other information to be extracted from this kind of plot.

So on top of that, I'm also looking at incorporation this into the JT podcast, but in a different way.  All I want to do is show the relationships between the moons as they orbit Jupiter.  So I can do things like this:

Lines between Io and Europa, 28 January 2015

Lines between Io and Ganymede, 28 January 2015

Lines between Io and Callisto, 28 January 2015

Lines between Europa and Ganymede, 28 January 2015

Lines between Europa and Callisto, 28 January 2015

Lines between Ganymede and Callisto, 28 January 2015

I like how our brains assign surfaces to all of these plots.

All lines combined, orbit lines removed

All lines combined showing orbits

So these figures show all of the possible unique combinations between the four moons of Jupiter: Io:Europa, Io:Ganymede, Io:Callisto, Europa:Ganymede, Europa:Callisto, and Ganymede:Callisto.

What does all this mean?  No idea.  But the plots are very beautiful.

This kind of thing can be done for any number of bodies in the solar system over any kind of time interval.  The possibilities are virtually endless.

However, I'm most interested in what orbital information these plots can give me.  But I have some questions -- the first being: What's happening when these lines "pile up"?  I'll continue to look at all of this and see if I can come up with some answers and more questions.

Spirograph Solar System Objects

I've been having fun making "spirograph" style images of solar system objects.

Yesterday I was working with 2D images like these of Jupiter and Earth:

So what I've done here is go over to the JPL Horizons website and get the X, Y, and Z vectors for the Earth and Jupiter.  Eleven years (about one Jupiter year) with lines connecting Jupiter and Earth every week.  The result is the images you see on a 2D plane.

Today I turned to 3D images and moved to the asteroid 357439 (2004 BL86), which will be passing by Earth tomorrow.  I still need to work with gnuplot a lot more to get the kinds of plots that I want, but here's what I've got sofar:

These are very beautiful and the variation is nearly endless.

Here are some others from yesterday:

Earth and 1 Ceres 11 years, 1 line per week

Earth and Mars 11 years, 1 line per week, z=0, x=0

Earth and Mars 11 years, 1 line per week, z=140, x=50

Earth and Mars 11 years, 1 line per week, z=140, x=120

I'm a bit obsessed.....

Here are 10 years (2015-2025) of orbits of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and 357439 (2004 BL86) -- the asteroid possing Earth tomorrow.  Lines drawn between them once every seven days.  'x' and 'z' are the viewing angles in degrees.

x=0, z=0

x=50,z=150

x=90, z=0

x=90, z=120

x=150, z=150

Ok, one more.  This is the Jovian moons.  I've connected Io and Callisto, (red) and Europa and Ganymede (blue) using a radius of 1.1 million km.