Come see live video of Jupiter (two-parter tonight)! 12-19-12 *Bastards shut down my broadcast!*

Well it seems the ZetaTalk cult is now claiming that Jupiter has "tilted."
[link to poleshift.ning.com]
This stems from this youtube video where the person used pictures from Stellarium that show Jupiter under the influence of field rotation (though he also seems to think this shows it "tilting" in a physical sense):
[link to www.youtube.com]
At 1:22 in the video you can clearly see Stellarium's interface, and the little telescope shaped button is not lit up, indicating that he is viewing the sky from an altitude-azimuth perspective and is subject to field rotation. Alt-az is the way most people view the sky day to day, so it's the stellarium default. You must observe from a polar aligned perspective, however, if you want to eliminate field rotation and see the true orientation. I'm going to do a 2 part broadcast tonight to show Jupiter both from an altitude-azimuth perspective, and later from a polar aligned perspective.

This first part will be done with my cell phone webcasting it so that I can show you both the video screen and the telescope itself so that you can see the camera is oriented normally in the scope. Then I'll switch over to broadcasting with the laptop to show just what the telescope sees directly. Later on I'll switch the telescope to a polar aligned perspective and then show what that looks like.

For this first part, notice that Jupiter's cloud bands appear tilted as it rises in the east. The great red spot is visible near the center of the planet. For the sake of simplicity, I've also set the camera to invert the image to compensate for the way the telescope normally produces an inverted image in this configuration. Here's the webcast:
[link to justin.tv]

Last Edited by Dr. Astro on 12/19/2012 08:53 PM