A fifth visible Jovian moon?

[cajen2]

Just been out viewing Jupiter. Seeing and transparency were both excellent and I could see at least four bands plus sundry whorls at mags between 130x and 240x in my SL 8" dob.

Question: how possible is it that I'm seeing a fifth Jovian moon? I"m not particularly well up on the system, but I could see a fainter and more distant spot on the same plane as the others. Moon or field star?

[dweller25]

[Stu]

7 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

Just been out viewing Jupiter. Seeing and transparency were both excellent and I could see at least four bands plus sundry whorls at mags between 130x and 240x in my SL 8" dob.

Question: how possible is it that I'm seeing a fifth Jovian moon? I"m not particularly well up on the system, but I could see a fainter and more distant spot on the same plane as the others. Moon or field star?

Field star definitely.

Seeing does seem good tonight, getting excellent views even with my little 60mm

[Peter Drew]

Pretty sure it will be a field star.  Other Jovian moons can be detected but call for very large optics and most likely imaging.

[cajen2]

That's what I thought but it is so perfectly in line....

[rl]

I've heard of Amalthea being seen with an 18". It's not that faint (mag 13 from memory) but really close to the planet.

https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2014/12/miniature-moons

There are a couple of other much fainter (mag 17?) captured asteroids whose names elude me tonight in distant orbits that might be on the verge of detectability with the same sort of aperture.