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Great whirling Jupiter

Emily Lakdawalla

Written by Emily Lakdawalla
November 10, 2016

For the last several weeks, Jupiter fans been receiving near-daily photo gifts from Damian Peach, one of the world's best photographers of the planets. He's been working through the trove of images he took during a March observing trip to Barbados, just after Jupiter's opposition. One by one, he's been sending photos as he's worked through and processed them. Finally, this week, he presented the pièce de résistance: a video of a spinning Jupiter. He shared it on Youtube and as a WMV video, but since it is amenable to the format, I absolutely had to convert it to animated GIF. Just let it spin and spin and spin before you....

Jupiter's entire face, March 18-22, 2016
Jupiter's entire face, March 18-22, 2016 Astronomer Damian Peach photographed Jupiter over five nights in March 2016 shortly after its opposition to assemble this movie of the giant planet's appearance. This opposition coincided with Juno's approach to Jupiter. The animation is also available on Youtube.Image: Damian Peach

For those of you who like to play with image textures in 3D programs, here is the same data in equirectangular format. Just make sure to give credit where it's due.

Map of Jupiter, March 2016
Map of Jupiter, March 2016 Astronomer Damian Peach produced this map of Jupiter from numerous images captured between March 18 and 22, 2016, shortly after Jupiter's opposition. The map is in equirectangular projection, where x and y coordinates map linearly to longitude and latitude, which exaggerates the poles.Image: Damian Peach

Thank you, Damien, for sharing your views of Jupiter with Earth.

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