Images from the NTU telescope

The above sequence of images and animation shows a transit of one of Jupiter's moons Io. The images were taken on October 10, 2010 with the Meade ETX-125 at NTU at the labelled times.

A transit occurs when a moon moves in front of Jupiter and casts a shadow onto the surface of Jupiter. This is not uncommon, since Jupiter has a large amount of moons. The most famous are the Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto. In the 1676 these transits were used by the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer to determine the speed of light.

You might also notice that there seems to be only on prominent band of clouds on Jupiter at the moment. The other one in the upper half is hidden by bright high level methane clouds.

Return to the image gallery.