Jupiter Impact Detection
Besides imaging Jupiter for the outofthisworldlisness of Jupiter, its moons transitting the surface, its moon shadows transitting its surface, the Great Red Spot, bands and belts, and many other spots, amateurs can also watch for impacts on Jupiter itself. Anyone remember Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 in 1994?
So.. I have been aware of this concept, and even used the DeTect software package from time to time… but never in a consistent manner. During a Citizen Science Education and Public Outreach Webinar on Feb 23rd, I learned something tremendous. One can install Detect (https://github.com/DeTeCt-PSWS/DeTeCt-MFC/releases/tag/v3.9.0) on the same system as Autostakkert! v4 (https://www.autostakkert.com/) and… wait for it…
autostakkert!v4 will automatically invoke DeTect and have it search for Jupiter Impacts *whilst* at the same time, doing its normal stacking process!
As seen in this image (autostakkertdetect.jpg) .. there is a tiny icon that looks like Jupiter (highlighted) and the check box is now checked after install of DeTect on the system.
I am looking forward to have this additional value added science tool for use in the future. In the meantime you can also run it on the raw saved .SER files from the past. For those RASC-KC members that ask.. why do you save your raw data? This is another great reason!
So I fired up DeTect and aimed it at my online archive of 2025 Jupiter .SER raw video files. Processing those 87 files of approx 528GB will probably take a few hours. Especially since I just saw that there were also some Mars files in there… I wonder what it will do with them? After that I will starting running through 2024, month by month, probably in overnight runs.
This is the realtime display (image detect.jpg) of the software at work.
There is another big impact imaging project aimed at detecting lunar impacts… But I haven’t tried that out yet 🙂
(https://www.nasa.gov/meteoroid-environment-office/lunar-impact-monitoring/)