Year: 2015-2016
Grade: 5 and 6
School: Liceo Los Robles
City: Maracaibo
Teachers: Henry Rincon, Ana Milagros
Target: Jupiter
Team members:
Alejandro Vargas (team leader)
Daniel Saab
Rafael Fernandez
Salomon Añez
Jose Bermudez
Cesar Avila
Alejandro Uzcategui
"In our opinion, target 2, planet Jupiter, the largest gas planet in our solar system, fifth in distance from the Sun, and a gas giant, with a very good long distance from our Sun, presents an unique opportunity to study atmospheric behavior of a planet in long distance, specially if it aligns in some future moment with its maiden star, our sun, and the Cassini spacecraft, what colors and spectra will it emit ? Although JPL doesn't specify if it will ever align for such a snapshot, we like to imagine the wide spectra it would give if that opportunity arrives. The data could be compared with the already known spectra of Jupiter's atmosphere.
Another important aspect would be to see the range of opportunities to observe storms! Will they be able to be detected from so far a distance? Perhaps changing color filters to the camera or a combination of them? Our club telescope has 5 filters and we are able to see dramatic changes when we make comparisons when photographing or observing our own moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.
It would also provide a chance to observe its behavior with its huge mass 1,8999x10 and its numerous amounts of moons, especially the 4 Galilean moons! Will it wobble? Or will the moons wobble? Could there be a chance to detect Jupiter's faint dark rings with this method?
For some years and specially in this year we have been able to observe for many nights Jupiter and its Galilean moons, sometimes when we really were in a completely dark observing site we managed to observe with our 4 inch telescope some subtle colors in the Galilean moons. We think gas giants in other solar systems surely will have also some moons and a technique could be devised to detect moons in extra solar gas giants! It would also give a chance to device techniques to observe "extra solar auroras" in its poles.
Thanks to the wonderful array of attached devices to the Cassini probe, this gas giant could also be photographed with different color filters providing another extraordinary opportunity to detect different features on a gas giant. We have read in the JPL website and the internet of the quantity of gas giant planets detected in other solar systems. So lets go ahead with target 2."
