The planet Jupiter was the center of attraction during a recent astronomy lab on the Gibbs campus of SPC. The photos above were captured on the evening of March 19 with telescopes atop the Natural Science building. Using inexpensive webcams attached to these telescopes, students in the observational astronomy course AST1022L obtained short video clips of Jupiter, each video clip containing over a thousand individual frames. In a subsequent lab, these videos were processed using a program called RegiStax.  This program analyzes each individual frame and selects several hundred of the very best, which are then “stacked”, or combined, to produce a single image of greater clarity than any of the individual frames. Additional processing enhances very subtle details in the composite photograph.

The Jupiter image on the left was captured by students Patrick Madsen, April Parker and Margolyn Fletcher at 8:39 pm. Jupiter’s great red spot is clearly visible just below center. Also visible is the moon Io, near the left edge of Jupiter between the two prominent cloud bands. Kayla Carrol, Tyrell Palmer, and Naman Johri captured the center image at 9:16 pm. Jupiter’s rapid rotation is clearly visible during the 37 minutes between these photographs. Io’s orbital motion is also evident – the moon now appears as a dark spot just left of center. The final image was captured by Dr. Joseph at 10:05 pm. The great red spot is nearing the right edge of the planet, and Io now appears to the right of center. The dark spot to the left of center is Io’s shadow on Jupiter’s cloud tops.

It is always fun and rewarding (for both students and instructor) to get out under the stars and do some “real world” astronomy!