Sunday, August 2, 2015

What Is Jupiter Today?

'Jupiter Today' is a blog focusing attention on the dynamic Jupiter system for the purpose of monitoring activity.  Please join me every day as I report on events taking place over the next 24 hours at, and in the environment of, our solar system's largest planet.  Detailed information and graphics include:

1. The position of Jupiter on the celestial sphere
2. The distance to, and relative motions of Jupiter and Earth
3. The motions of the four Galilean satellites in their orbits around Jupiter
4. Jupiter-satellite interactions
5. Satellite mutual events
6. Where and when to observe predicted Jupiter events on Earth
7. Recent images and data
8. Recently published research papers

New blogs are published every day.

This blog is part of a larger project to create a world-wide system of continuous, or near-continuous, observations of the Jupiter system.  There are many new discoveries to be made about Jupiter and leaving these discoveries to chance is unacceptable.  Long-term, high cadence monitoring is the only way to make these discoveries.  Data collected with this method will allow researchers to test and/or update current theories which can then guide future observations.

Observations and discoveries will lead to questions requiring more observations, which will inevitably lead to more discoveries and more questions.

Some of these observations will include images showing weather on and in the local environment of Jupiter.  Images that I acquire (ones that I take, ones emailed to me, or ones I find on the internet) will be stored in a simple database that can then be queried to access relevant images covering specific dates and times.  This will allow those interested to study the weather on Jupiter and see how it changes daily, seasonally, and during hightened solar activity (like when a coronal mass ejection reaches the Jupiter system).

Other observations will include how the moons of Jupiter interact with the planet and each other.  This will require some well-calibrated cameras and other instruments to do astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy.  To my knowledge this work has never been done over a long period of time at high cadence.

There will be observations of events that no one is expecting.  When you continuously watch a highly dynamic system for a long period of time, what do you see?  This project will answer some of that.

Please read, like, and subscribe!  Tell your friends about this project, too!  Comments and constructive criticism are welcome.

Until tomorrow --- I bid you Peace

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