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Home » News » CESAR Observes Jupiter in its Closest Approach
05
October
2022
 CESAR Observes Jupiter in its Closest Approach
On Monday, September 26th, Jupiter reached its closest approach to Earth since 1963. The gas giant's close distance of only 588 million km from Earth was possible due to a combination of two factors:
 
1) Jupiter was in opposition: When the Earth passes in-between the Sun and Jupiter, the alignment of the two objects on opposite sides of the Earth means that Jupiter rises in the east just when the sun sets in the west. During opposition, Jupiter appears very large and bright in the sky.
 
2) Jupiter was in its perigee: Since both the Earth and Jupiter have elliptical orbits, they pass by each other at varying distances. For example, at its farthest distance from Earth, Jupiter is approximately 960 million km away. Jupiter's perigee position is when it is closest to the Sun in its orbit. This occurs every 11.8 years, due to the long orbital period of the gas giant around the Sun. 
 
While opposition occurs almost yearly (every 13 months), the coincidence of opposition and Jupiter's perigree is much more rare, because Jupiter's orbit around the Sun takes close to 12 years to complete.
 
For this special occasion, the CESAR Helios solar observatory was operated at night, and the telescope that usually captures the Sun in visible light was repurposed to observe Jupiter instead! Here you can see the observatory's dome at night (left), and the telescope pointed at Jupiter (right), which was then the brightest object in the sky, apart from the waxing crescent moon.
 
 
 
The night's resulting stacked image shows not only Jupiter with its bands but also three of its moons:
 
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October
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23
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22
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CESAR aired live on TVE-24H
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May
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Presentation of CESAR in Expoastronómica 2019
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March
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CESAR at the European Planetary Science Conference EPSC: transits in our Solar System
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September
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08
July
2016
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10
September
2015
Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev visits CESAR
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22
April
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André Kuipers visits CESAR Control Room
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March
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El espacio al alcance de los estudiantes (es)
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19
January
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CESAR in the Scientific Weekend in Madrid
The CESAR project in the most scientific weekend in Madrid See more
20
October
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CESAR in ExpoAstronomica
The first astronomic fair in Spain, Valdeluz, Guadalajara. See more
15
September
2014
Meeting of the Spanish Society of Astronomy
CESAR project in XI meeting of the Spanish Society of Astronomy, this year will take in Teruel. See more
03
September
2014
CESAR in the Third Workshop On Robotic Autonomous Observatories
CESAR has contributed with two speeches, enter the news to download them. See more
16
November
2013
Solar Observatory dome installed
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April
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Hardware installation finished in Robledo by MDSCC team
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December
2012
CESAR ESAC radiotelescope is available again
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September
2012
CESAR project agreement signature
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June
2012
New CESAR Control Room
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May
2012
NASA & JPL first visit to the CESAR initiative
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July
2011