Hubble Captures Rare Triple-Moon Conjunction

[n2doc]

FEBRUARY 5, 2015: Firing off a string of snapshots like a sports photographer at a NASCAR race, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a rare look at three of Jupiter's largest moons zipping across the banded face of the gas-giant planet: Europa, Callisto, and Io. Jupiter's four largest moons can commonly be seen transiting the face of the giant planet and casting shadows onto its cloud tops. However, seeing three moons transiting the face of Jupiter at the same time is rare, occurring only once or twice a decade. Missing from the sequence, taken on January 24, 2015, is the moon Ganymede that was too far from Jupiter in angular separation to be part of the conjunction.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/05/image/a/

[SheilaT]

1. In October, 2013, I went to the adult astronomy camp

at the University of Arizona. It's just a weekend, so very doable for working adults if you can get to Tucson. among the things we saw one night was a couple of the moons of Jupiter and their shadows. It was beyond cool.

Here's a link in case anyone reading this can consider going. http://www.astronomycamp.org/pages/adultcamp.html