Jupiter's Scars and Eclipsing Europa

In a discussion with Emily Lakdawalla about the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact, I was looking through all the unprocessed data from this event just hanging out in the archive (let me tell you, there is quite a bit of it) when I spotted this, sent her the preview image, and we both boggled for a moment before realizing it was Europa in eclipse. I mean, it looks like a moon, obviously, but Hubble never sees the outer planets in anything but full illumination. She input the timestamp into the Jupiter Viewer which resulted in the realization that it was indeed a moon, and that Jupiter's shadow was merely being cast upon it, causing it to look partially illuminated. The funny thing is that I've looked for eclipsed moons before, but never managed to find one just at the edge of the penumbra like this. What a wonderful, chance finding.

Also visible are several impact scars all in a row along Jupiter's cloudtops where the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted it so many years ago, and we were so, so lucky to have the Hubble Space Telescope ready to take as many observations of the event as possible.

Then, of course, what image of Jupiter is complete without the Great Red Spot? That ended up in the picture, too. Wow! This is the Jupiter image that has it all.

Note that Europa is not in full color because it was only present at this stage of the eclipse in a single image, the F953N one. By the time the subsequent images required for the color had been taken, it had moved further into the penumbra, and become nearly invisible. This is a bit sad because I'd love to see if there was any atmospheric reddening like with Earth's eclipses of its Moon. Alas.

This image represents Jupiter as it appeared on 1994 July 19 at 09:42:16 UTC.

This image is scaled by 200% of its original size.

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=...

Red: WFPC2 F953N (u2fi0w09t_c0f)
Green: WFPC2 F555W (u2fi0w0at_c0f)
Blue: WFPC2 F336W (u2fi0w0bt_c0f)

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Taken on: June 24, 2019

Tags:

Europa

Jupiter

planet

clouds

atmosphere

Shoemaker-Levy 9

impact

scar

comet « less

Sets appears in: • all astronomy • Hubble Processing more » • Planets « less

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