Astronomers Capture A Rare Glimpse Of Eclipsing Jovian Moons

to begin with this calendar month , astronomers survey Jupiter ’s moon Io received an early Christmas surprisal when another Jovian moon , Europa , unexpectedly passed in front of it .

This is what ’s called a passage — when a celestial object passes in front of another object along our visual sheet of hatful . In this case , Europa passed in front of Io , cater these unprecedented images .

As noted , it caught the stargazer completely off guard . Phil Plait from Slate ’s Bad Astronomyexplains :

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I had to express joy when I saw the animation . My first thought was , why did n’t the stargazer get laid this would happen ? The log records … show they really were surprised . SoI looked up how often these transportation system happen , and it turns out to be a minuscule complicated . First , they chance clustered in time when Earth passes through Jupiter ’s equatorial plane . Then you might only see a half - dozen or so from a given location per month ( some pass during the day , or behind Jupiter , when you ca n’t see them ) . That ’s not very many , and even then they only last for a few instant at a time .

So really , from a give observatory , it ’s pretty unlikely at any given meter to accidentally observe a transit . However , in this case , astronomers are engaging in a long - full term campaign to observe Io , because the tide from Jupiter cause it to be the most volcanically active physical object in the solar system . Its volcanoes are constantly erupting , and when they do they ’re visible in the infrared emission . The Gemini telescope , which made these observation , is designed to look at these wavelengths , and in fact you could see an active volcano on the upper left over part of Io ’s face . Since thing on Io change all the prison term , lots of watching are made , and so it ’s inevitable a visible transit would find eventually .

This is not the first time astronomers have captured dominate moons . Last year , the Mars Curiosity rover captured image of picture passing in front of Diemos .

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