Jupiter Strip

Jupiter, the Great Red Spot and Io’s Shadow
Sketch and Details by Michael Rosolina

Hello,

This is a strip sketch of Jupiter. Instead of drawing the Jovian disk as a ‘snapshot” in time, I watched the central meridian and recorded features as they rotated past it, giving me an “unrolled” version of a section of the sphere. Since Jupiter makes one complete turn about every 10 hours, this can be a very useful way to keep up with its rapid rotation.

As you can see, much was happening including a transit of the Great Red Spot (GRS), lots of activity associated with the North Equatorial Belt (NEB), and a transit of Io. The Galilean moon itself was not visible to me but the shadow it cast was quite prominent against the bright cloudtops of the Equatorial Zone (EZ).

The drawing was done at the eyepiece on Strathmore recycled sketch paper using 2B, HB, and 6B pencils. Other notes are with the sketch.

Object: Jupiter
Type: Planet
Location: Friars Hill, WV USA
Date: August 26th, 2009

Thanks,

Michael Rosolina