28 March 2024 - Mission Day: 10345 - DOY: 088
Pick of The Week
 
 

Two-Moon Surprise (October 28, 2005)


Hi-res TIF image (2.3M)

This just goes to show that you never know.

We were surprised ourselves to learn that SOHO could in fact see two of Jupiter's moons with our LASCO C2 instrument. While Jupiter had passed through our field of views many times over the almost 10 years of SOHO observations, no one stopped to examine and measure whether we could see any moons.

The question arose on a SOHO hunter chat page and Tony Hoffman wrote his reply with details about how it could be determined that, yes, two of Jupiter's moons were indeed visible and where they were. Further calculations by Karl Battams of the Naval Research Laboratory confirmed this. The "blooming" effect from oversaturated pixels on the SOHO detector creates the "wings" to either side of the planet. We think many scientists will be saying "Well, I'll be darned" to themselves at this news.

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