Astrophoto of the month - October 2022 - Jupiter and Io

The Half-Meter telescope

In Sülysáp, in the eastern part of Pest county, the Hungarian Astrophotographers' Association together with the Amateur Astronomical Association of Sülysáp inaugurated the first high-performance telescope with a mirror diameter of 50 centimeters. This telescope will serve community astroimaging purposes, and it is the largest telescope for this purpose in the country. 

Photographing on the evening of the inaugural ceremony

The telescope has already shown its amazing abilities earlier, but no pictures of planets or even any objects of the Solar System have been captured with it. But on the evening of the inaugural ceremony suitable weather conditions were promised, so Gábor Tóth and László Francsics took several series of images of Jupiter. Although the astronomical seeing wasn’t especially good, the telescope showed that it has potential in the field of photographing objects of the Solar System.

Jupiter and Io

The image shows Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, shortly after its closest proximity to Earth. Its mass is two and a half times greater than that of all the other planets combined. To its right is one of its moons called Io, which is the innermost of the four largest moons of Jupiter. Thanks to the extraordinary gravitational forces of Jupiter, volcanic activity is still present on Io to this day, although it has ceased to exist on other moons of similar size for millions of years.