OCCULTATIONS & ECLIPSES ON JUPITER
About every 6 years, the Earth crosses the same orbital plane in which Jupiter's satellites orbit the planet. When this happens, like this year, it is possible for few weeks to observe reciprocal occultations and eclipses between the moons of Jupiter.
The night of August 8th was a truly unique opportunity to image two of these PHEMUs (as they are often called, from the French word "Phenomene Mutuel"), as a double event clearly visible for Asian observers took place: an occultation between Ganymede and Europa was followed by an eclipse between the two. In short, Ganymede passed in front of Europa and not even a couple of hours after it casted its shadow on the smaller moon. These are quite rare events, having a double one and clearly visible from my location was an unmissable event I was determined to image, weather permitting.
As the night turned out quite clear, I collected hundreds of 30" videos which I then processed to obtain sharp images of these satellites every half minute, images which I then combined to create two short videos that condense both these incredible events in few seconds.
I also created a panel with the most significant shots used in the videos. It is important to realize that the apparent size of these moons are really very tiny, as example the apparent diameter of Europa, the smallest of the two moons, was only 1", which is equivalent to observe a dollar cent from a distance of two miles and a half (one Euro cent at a distance of 3.5 km..).
C14 + Siebert 1.5x (@ f/16.6) - Drizzle 1.5x - ZWO ASI290MM - iOptron CEM120 - Singapore
