Jupiter on 29 June 2019
When you will look up the night sky this month, you will very quickly notice a bright dot there. This bright dot is Jupiter.
The beauty of this planet can be very quickly uncovered even with a simple small pair of binoculars. If you have some other telescope, then do not hesitate to take a look.
Planet Jupiter can be seen with its moons around. We often call this small planetary system a “small solar system”. Actually this may be a little bit tricky, the truth is that Jupiter is a giant gas planet (very similar to stars!) and the moons orbiting around are rocky moons, many of them spheres.
But back to watching of Jupiter and the moons. You can try to use your digital camera to take a picture. But remember to set the exposure time for at least a couple of seconds (do not forget about the apperture settings). Or simply use the night photo mode if your camera has only this option.
Photo of Jupiter taken with a simple camera may look like this above. I have used a small camera while looking at Jupiter from our home. I did not have any telescope with me, but anyway it was an awesome opportunity to see this spectacular planetary system.
When you want to identify the each moon on photo, you can use simulation tool, for example “Stellarium” for your computer (available for all major operating systems) or if you have a smartphone, then I can recommend you the application called “SkySafari” or another one called simply “Planets”.
With Stellarium you can simulate the view as below:
I am sure that you will like it. And here is another viwe, offered by the above mentioned application “SkySafari”:
What do you think, will you try it?
~Jozef
