Jupter Space: Phew! What a Strip!
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows several "conventional" views of Jupiter and one strip view. The bottom map is one that is often used by those of us who still draw what we observe, rather than snap pictures. Jupiter rotates so fast that, given a long enough night, good seeing throughout, and enough of the planet in the sky you can fill in such a map. Nifty stuff, old techniques that still live on!
2 comments:
The Strip view reminds me of one of the map types in Fractal Terrains 3, where you can generate that sort of view for a world. You usually are doing it for an Earthlike world, but you could do it for a gas giant too, theoretically...
I have a book on Jupiter from 1930 (maybe earlier) that has several such strip maps. I assume that observers from that era also did this for Saturn (but the storms are a lot more subtle in appearance).
I once spent almost an entire night, without realizing it was that long, observing Jupiter. Just was the perfect mix of seeing, but a bad mix of cold (when I realized why my teeth were chattering so much after 5-6 hours).
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