The King 2015

The Planet Jupiter and three of its Galilean Moons: a composite photograph of several images taken with my QHY5v planetary camera attached to my 127mm Meade Refractor with a 2.5 x Barlow lens

Jupiter is a giant gas planet. Its atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium gas, similar to our Sun. The planet's surface is covered in thick red, brown, yellow and white clouds.  Jupiter is a very windy planet. Wind speeds range from 192 mph to more than 400 mph. The temperature in the clouds of Jupiter is about minus 145 degrees Celsius . The temperature near the planet's center is much, much hotter. The core temperature may be about 24,000 degrees Celsius. 

 Jupiter has an extremely powerful magnetic field.  Deep under Jupiter's clouds is a huge ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. As Jupiter spins, the swirling liquid metal core creates the strongest magnetic field in the Solar System. At the tops of the clouds (tens of thousands of kilometers above where the field is created), Jupiter's magnetic field is 20 times stronger than the magnetic field on Earth. The interaction  between Jupiter and its inner moon Io creates am immense power source that generates radio signal bursts at 25MHz.. I might try to record these signals using the LVST.

For more information about the Lowestoft Very Small (radio) Telescope (LVST) follow the link:

http://missbissuk.wix.com/lvst

The Planet Jupiter has just passed opposition and is shining brightly, high in Northern Hemisphere skies for much of the night.  Having been proper poorly with 'man flu', the telescope has remained in its case and Jupiter has shone upon our backyard ignored.  On the 21st of February I could resist  the call of the 'King of the Planets' no longer.  My telescope, placed upon its mount, tracking and pointed at Jupiter collected the light which had traveled from the Sun and had been reflected back off the Jovian cloud tops.

 

Various meteorological features may be seen in my images Jupiter's upper atmosphere:

• The Northern and Southern Polar Regions and their associated Northern and Southern Temperate Zones
• The North and South Equatorial belts (The dark red/magenta stripes running across the disc)
• The Northern Temperate Belt (The thin dark stripe above the North Equatorial Belt)
• The  Northern  Tropical Zone (The thick white stripe between the Northern Equatorial Belt and the Northern Temperate Belt)
• The Equatorial Zone (The thick white stripe between the Northern and Southern Equatorial Belts)
• The Southern Tropical Zone (The white stripe below the Southern Equatorial Belt)
• The Southern Temperate Belt (running directly below the Southern Tropical Zone)
• The Great Red Spot an enormous anticyclone (on Jupiter's eastern limb on the southern edge of the Southern Equatorial Belt)
• 3 or 4 white/pink ovals, anticyclonic storm systems, disrupting the flow of the Southern Temperate Belt
• Blue and white festoons in Equatorial Zone

 Credits: some text NASA