Jupiter and 3 moons last night...and a question

[pixelbasher]

Hi all, I took this last night whilst out moon hunting. Jupiter was quite close in the sky to the moon so it caught my attention.

I'm a night sky newby, only really shot the moon, the southern cross, and one attempt at star trails, but to me this is cool that with fairly basic gear I can capture some moons from another planet!

I took a look at stellarium synced to the time of the photo and it appears to be IO Ganymede and Callisto. Now I am trying to work out what is above it in the shot. If I have my bearings correct it shows up as cap HIP 1055115 with a funny letter before the word cap. What is it?

[FarmerDave8N]

Now I am trying to work out what is above it in the shot. If I have my bearings correct it shows up as cap HIP 1055115 with a funny letter before the word cap. What is it?

It's a star: Iota Capricorni, or ι cap. Lower-case iota in a sans-serif font looks like a funny letter.

From the International Astronomical Union page on naming astronomical objects:
http://www.iau.org/public_press/themes/naming/#stars


The earliest naming system which is still popular was introduced by Johann Bayer in his Uranometria star catalog of 1603. As many predecessors and successors, he used constellations to identify stars within them. To distinguish the stars in each constellation, he labelled them with Greek letters, and approximately in the order of their (apparent) brightness, so that the brightest star was labelled Alpha, the second brightest Beta, an so on. For example, the brightest star in Cygnus (the Swan) is Alpha Cygni (note the use of the genitive of the Latin constellation name) which is also called Deneb, or the brightest star in Leo (the Lion) is Alpha Leonis, also called Regulus. Misestimates and other irregularities are the reasons why this is only an approximate scheme: for example, the brightest star in Gemini (the Twins) is Beta Geminorum (Pollux) while Alpha Geminorum (Castor) is only the second brightest star of the constellation. Unfortunately, the Greek alphabet has only 24 letters, and many constellations contain many more stars, even if the naming is restricted to those visible to the naked eye. Johann Bayer then employed low case letters from "a" to "z" and then upper case letters from "A" to "Z" for the stars number 25 to 50 and 51 to 76 in each constellation, respectively.
HIP 105515 is its designation in the Hipparcos star catalog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparcos

HTH,
David

[viktor061]

never having seen the southern cross, would you mind posting it?

[pixelbasher]

Viktor: I'm certain I have a better shot of it than this one in this link (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=713162&highlight=southern+cross), (scroll down a little to the second shot) but it's all I could find. I took some ones comparable to the image in this thread with the 100-400, but do you think I can find the damn things!
I'll take another look after dinner. It might be quicker to go out and shoot it in a couple of hours when night falls!

I really need a better way of storing and retrieving my images. :rolleyes:


FarmerDave: Thanks for the info.


Anything else in the southern hemi that is worthy of some closer attention with the gear I have?

[pixelbasher]

Sorry no crux tonight, it's too low in the horizon for me to get at home, but I just did another of Jupiter and this is so cool! (for me anyway :oops:)

As soon as I looked through the live view I could see some changes in the orbits from last night.
I overlaid last nights and tonights shot and got this. Io ? has done half an orbit and I have another one appear, so 4 moons all up (that I can see) tonight.