Jupiter's moons

[MJP]

When viewing Jupiter's moons this evening the inner most moon appeared to be double (giving 5 moons).

I thought it might be my scope but I tried moving it and changing the eyepiece and still got what looked like two moons close together where the inner most moon should be.

Is this unusual? Any thoughts would be welcome.

Mike:confused:

[matteboy]

No way me too, just asked the same thing! What scope are you using?

[beamish]

What time were you both observing when you saw this ?

[riklaunim]

Maybe you saw a star close to Jup - HIP 118293 at 7,45 mag ? Also Europa and Io were one after another.

[richbyers]

check stellarium at the time of observing

rich

[Llamanaut]

i saw it too at around 2200... certainly looked like a disc not a pinpoint

[MJP]

I was observing around 23.00 hours. It was on identical brightmess to Io.

Mike

[riklaunim]

Well - if there was something big it should hit Jupiter sooner or later

[beamish]

Well I would say that was Io and Europa that you saw, very close "apparently" and that the 4th moon would most likely to have been the star described above by Rik. Just had a check with SNight and The planets app (Castle Point Astronomy Club)

[Dubbs75]

I saw the same thing too. Took some dodgy quality pics on the mobile and thought the image was due to the camera. Will upload later and see if its the same as you saw.

[matteboy]

Yep same as what we saw with one other moon on the right hand side, worked out the outer most one was a background star, on my post of this one had a reply from Jahmanson:

"After the Callisto, Europa, Io and Ganymede, the next brightest of Jupiters 60+ moons is around 14th magnitude - I've seen a 13th mag supernova with a 12" scope from a dark sight once - and that was at the limit."

Awesome pic from a mobile Dubbs, almost better than what I saw in my scope!

[Dubbs75]

Cheers mate. Need to find out which filters I use to try and see the bands on Jupiters surface. You can faintly see them using our Celestron Powerseeker 127 with the revelation ep kit recently brought but would be nice to get better definition if its possible on that scope?