Can you see Amalthea with a telescope?
From personal experience, I know that seeing it takes a combination of a large telescope (at least 24 inches in aperture), high magnification (above 250x), great sky conditions, and the tiny moon lying at its farthest point from Jupiter from our point of view. Amalthea isn’t really that faint, as celestial objects go.
Can you see Amalthea?
Amalthea, small, potato-shaped moon of the planet Jupiter and the only Jovian satellite other than the four discovered by Galileo in 1610 to have been found by direct visual observation (as opposed to photography or electronic imaging) from Earth.
Who is the Jupiter satellite?
Jupiter has four large satellites, known as the Galilean satellites: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
What is NASA’s outermost satellite called?
Callisto
Also, the subtle gravitational perturbations they exert on each other were used to determine the approximate mass of each. * Callisto, the outermost Galilean satellite, is larger than the planet Mercury.
What does Amalthea look like?
Amalthea is the largest of the inner satellites of Jupiter and is irregularly shaped and reddish in color. It is thought to consist of porous water ice with unknown amounts of other materials. Its surface features include large craters and ridges.
What is the diameter of Amalthea?
103.77 mi
Amalthea/Diameter
How long does Amalthea take to orbit Jupiter?
12 hours
Amalthea/Orbital period
How many natural satellites does Jupiter have?
Read More
| Planet / Dwarf Planet | Confirmed Moons | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Jupiter | 53 | 79 |
| Saturn | 53 | 82 |
| Uranus | 27 | 27 |
| Neptune | 14 | 14 |
How is Voyager 1 propelled?
(Voyager 1 is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. RTGs convert to electricity the heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.)
What is the temperature on Amalthea?
155±15 K
Infrared photometry of Amalthea (JV) indicates that it is at a temperature of 155±15 K and has a raduis of 120±30 km. There is no evidence for substantial heating by the Jovian radiation belts.
How often does the satellite Amalthea circle Jupiter?
The bright spot in the top right image lies within Amalthea’s large crater Gaea. Amalthea circles Jupiter once every 11 hours 57 minutes (0.498 Earth day) at a distance of 181,000 km (112,500 miles) in a nearly circular orbit that lies within half a degree of Jupiter’s equatorial plane.
Who was the first person to discover Amalthea?
Amalthea. Amalthea, small, potato-shaped moon of the planet Jupiter and the only Jovian satellite other than the four discovered by Galileo in 1610 to have been found by direct visual observation (as opposed to photography or electronic imaging) from Earth. It was discovered in 1892 by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard…
What kind of surface does Amalthea have?
Amalthea has a dark, reddish surface marked by impact craters. The leading hemisphere (that facing the direction of motion) is some 30 percent brighter than the trailing one, presumably as a result of bombardment by small meteoroids that have entered the Jovian system.
Why does Amalthea have a leading and trailing hemisphere?
Because Amalthea’s rotational period matches its orbital period around Jupiter, it has a leading hemisphere (top images), which always faces in the direction of its motion around Jupiter, and an opposite, trailing hemisphere (bottom images).