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Showing posts with the label solar eclipse

What Jupiter and Mercury Have in Common?

Before we jump to premature conclusions with easy answers such as 'nothing at all' or 'at least they are both orbiting the Sun', perhaps we could do some quick research, just in case... With Jupiter's equatorial radius almost thirty times bigger than the same property on Mercury, the obvious composition difference between one gas giant and a small rocky planet and all the other major differences in mass, density, temperature, orbital inclination, and orbit period, and with almost everything we could compare the two, it is very hard to find the slightest similarity. Not to say that Jupiter in its arsenal is in possession of moons equal to or even bigger in size than the smallest planet of our solar system.


However, within the past couple of seasons, what they had in common was the fact that they were under the spotlight of all of us who, from time to time, enjoy gazing at the sky with our naked eyes or through modest telescopes with a strong feeling of being the witnesses of our own solar system at work. It all started at the end of last year with a rare Jupiter-Mercury conjunction when two planets came close to each other to the size of two moon-diameters. It was easily observed without any optical aids just after the sunset on December 21, 2018.



Even better, the show was on June 12, 2019. On that day, the giant planet was closest to Earth during the celestial event known as Jupiter’s opposition. At its closest point, it came to within 641 million km from Earth. We took the chance to point the telescope and observe the mighty planet and its four largest Galilean moons: IO, EUROPA, GANYMEDE, and CALLISTO. If you watch the video, you'll find the entire story of the event and more facts about the history of the most famous moons, along with short footage from the Sky-Watcher and references in the video's description.



Culmination in our amateur astronomy happened a couple of days ago on November 11, 2019, with the celestial transit of Mercury over the face of the Sun. It was the last transit of the small planet for a while, and the next time it is going to 'eclipse' the mother star again will be in 2032! It was hard to take the photo of the event since it was fuzzy and cloudy with the sunset approaching rapidly, but we made it at last, and it was worth all the efforts.

Stay tuned for more celestial events in the future and maybe some more stories and photos from the active heavens, along with our first long-exposure astrophotographs from outside the solar system.

Solar Eclipse

The moon travels around the Earth in an elliptical orbit, and logically there are two points in its path where it is closest and farthest from us. Today it was in "perigee-syzygy" of the Earth-Moon-Sun system, or simply called "supermoon". Coincidentally, it happens that today it has the power to fully block the sunlight in northern Europe and make the biggest shadow one can make on Earth. In Serbia it only made a partial eclipse covering somewhat less than 50% of the solar disk. These are 12 photos I took in intervals of approximately 10 minutes from the eclipse start at 9:40 until it went away around 11:58. The biggest shade was at 10:48. We were pretty lucky today since nature gave us a clear sky with just one stubborn cloud that covered the sun-moon kiss around 11AM.


The above image is the composition of those 12 photos, which I took through our Sky-Watcher telescope with a solar filter. I still don't have a proper camera or adapter for taking astronomical photos, so I used our DSLR and manually took images. Therefore, photos are not ideal and perfect, so I used a little photoshopping to make them as clear as possible.


More about today's event in our neighborhood I found at timeanddate.com and tons of websites, as the media literally went viral this morning. No wonder, as the next partial eclipse in Europe will be in 5 years, and the next total one is not expected before 2026. Unfortunately, a total eclipse in Serbia will not be visible any time soon.


It sure is spectacular when our moon eclipses the sun, but in the celestial sky above, there are more events in the same fashion. I mean, situations when three solar system bodies become aligned, so to speak. In this update of the blog story about the classic eclipse, one of those I took with our scope on May 9, 2016. It was the transit of Mercury across the Sun, and the photo ended very well. I managed to catch one of those giant sunspots as well.