This image shows the shadows of two of Jupiter's moons transiting the planet's disk. The moon visible to the left of the planet is Ganymede, and Ganymede's shadow is visible as the dark spot on the left. Jupiter's moon Io is transiting the face of the planet, and its shadow is the dark spot to the right. If you look closely, you can make out Io above and to the right of Ganymede's shadow. This event was followed a week later by a rare triple shadow transit.
At the time this image was taken, Jupiter was 99.9 percent illuminated and less than a month past opposition. Jupiter was a bright magnitude -2.48 beacon in the night sky, eclipsed in magnitude only by the planet Venus.
This image was obtained by stacking the best frames of a video clip captured using a ToUcam Pro web cam on a Takahashi FCT-150 telescope with a TeleVue 4x PowerMate operating at f28. This image was taken from my backyard in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Constellation: Leo
RA: 10h 55m 04.7s Dec: +08d 27' 23"
March 21, 2004 at 0656 U.T.
Image by Sid Leach
Scottsdale, Arizona
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