New storms on Jupiter look like Mickey Mouse

A full view of Jupiter on February 25, 2014 showing several features including three storms that in combination look like Mickey Mouse. 

Credit: Damian Peach. 

We told you this was going to be a good season to observe Jupiter, and astro-photographers in the northern hemisphere have been making the most of this time of opposition where Jupiter has been riding high in the sky.

What we didn't know was that there was going to be a familiar face staring back at us.

A combination of three storms has been noted throughout this Jupiter observing season for its resemblance to Mickey Mouse's face (at least in outline).

Damian has also put together a stunning movie (below) showing about three hours of rotation of the king of the planets.


Damian explained the Mickey Mouse storms are two anticyclones (high pressure regions) that form the ears while a longer elongated cyclone (low pressure) forms the face.

The abundance of storms on Jupiter are a result of the planet's dense atmosphere of hydrogen and helium and large gravitational field. Storms on this planet are likely the strongest in the Solar System.

Jupiter reached its most northern point for 2014 at a declination of +23.3 degrees on March 11, but it's still easily visible since it is the brightest starlike object in the evening sky.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and the ‘Mickey Mouse’ storms on February 25, 2014. 

Credit: Damian Peach.

Xmas Tree-Type Cluster and the Cone Nebula

Xmas Tree-Type Gaseous Cloud Cluster and the Cone Nebula.

Stargazer Captures Striking Nebula View

Bill Snyder captured Sh2-112 Sharpless on July 29, 2012 from his home observatory in Connellsville, Pa.

He used a TMB130mm telescope equipped with an Apogee U8300 camera, as well as an Atlas EQG mount and several filters to view SH2-112.

The total exposure time to capture this image was more than 18 hours.

CREDIT: Bill Snyder, Astrophotography

NASA: Carina Nebula - MAD ESO's VLT

This impressive image of the open cluster known as Trumpler 14 was obtained with the Multi-conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD) mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope.

The cluster, which is found to be only 500 000 years old - a blink of an eye in the Universe's history - resides at the outskirts of the central region of the Carina Nebula, located some 8000 light-years away towards the constellation of Carina (the Keel).

Trumpler 14 is not only the youngest, but also one of the most populous clusters within the nebula.

Astronomers counted about 2000 stars in the very central parts of this cluster.

The MAD instrument allows astronomers to obtain very sharp images over a wide area and this image is the adaptive optics image that so far covers the widest area on the sky. The field of view is about 2 arcminutes across and the image is based on data obtained through two different filters (K and H).

Read and See More ESO Images......

Picture: ESO / AFP/GETTY

Amateur Astronomer Captures Jellyfish Nebula: astrophotography

This gorgeous image of the Jellyfish Nebula leads off our second installment of reader-contributed astrophotography.

Also known as IC443, the Jellyfish in the upper right of the image is about 5,000 light years away in the constellation Gemini. It is the remnant of a supernova that exploded around 30,000 light years ago.

This image was captured by Mel Martin with an SBIG STL-11000 astronomical camera and a Takahashi 5-inch refractor telescope, from his backyard observatory near Tucson. The image took three hours of total exposure, 2 hours through a hydrogen-alpha filter, and one hour of color data.

“What I find interesting in all these images are the subtle differences in star colors sprinkled around the field of view,” Martin wrote in an email to Wired.com. “Our eyes are attracted to the red hydrogen nebula, but the stars are really quite varied and pretty.”

Below, this view of the Whirlpool galaxy 23 million light years away was captured by Stem cell researcher Alexander Boiko from his backyard in Menlo Park, California with an SBIG STL-11000 astronomical camera and telescope