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White barges on Jupiter

John

By John
in Observing - Planetary

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John

John

Posted
Posted

Has anyone else noticed these features in Jupiter's North Equatorial Belt (NEB) ?

I've seen them a few times over the past couple of months. They take the form of elongated bright areas on the southern side of the NEB, often adjacent to the area that the Great Red Spot resides in on the SEB. I saw one tonight with my ED120 refractor at 180x. 

I've seen dark barges (as these elongated areas are known) in the NEB in previous years but I can't recall seeing these white barges before.

Two of these features appear quite clearly to the N of the GRS in this image captured on 25-11-13 by SGL member catman161 - hope you don't mind me using your image to illustrate this ! :smiley:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29307236@N07/11058867626/

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mjpfc

mjpfc

Posted
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I looked at Jupiter this morning through my 8" newt with a 10mm lens, looking for Ganymede.

I thought I had seen it as a bright spot near the NEB, to the left of the disc, now I,m not so

sure if this blighter was lurking there I may have seen the Barge and not big G at all.

It was not particularly pin-pointy as is the case, usually, with the moons.

Oooer,    Mick

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SnakeyJ

SnakeyJ

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Not great seeing last night and I was really experimenting with star test collimation of image train, but pushing the focal length too far @ 4600mm. However both barges are present in images between 0113 and 0200, most visible in G channel.

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

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JamesF

JamesF

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I think I've caught them in these images if I've understood you correctly, John:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/200636-first-jupiter-of-the-season-and-more/

The GRS has disappeared off the western limb in my images though.

I had noticed them and thought they looked to be more to the south of the NEB, butting up against it.  It looks like there's some blue-ish feature around them the name of which evades me for the moment but my brain tells me it's something to do with curtains :D

To my eye they seem to share a more soft-edged diffuse quality with the cloud feature that follows the GRS, whereas when I've seen the dark (brown, usually?) barges before they seem more hard-edged.

James

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John

John

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The features in your images could be the same ones I saw James but imaging obviously gives a lot more definition than the visual views. Last night I could clearly see one of these elongated white shapes part embedded in the NEB and having suggestions of darker material framing it, so to speak. It was a bit ahead of the GRS. If' I'd observed for longer I may well have see another of these features as it came around the disk but some clouds spoiled the fun.

Jakes image is the closest to what I was seeing last night I think.

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  • 1 month later...
Special K

Special K

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I've just come in from a little stint dedicated solely to Jupiter and noticed a small dark blemish, diffuse and hard to make out just south of the NEB. Didn't know much about barges but heard them mentioned in passing here in the forums. I didn't get much detail of the GRS I was after but very nice to learn something new tonight!

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