Abstract
Amateur astronomers operating small telescopes accumulate a larger amount of observational time of Solar System planets than the ensemble of professional telescopes. Over the last 15 years, advancements in low-cost fast acquisition cameras and image software processing tools have pushed forward the scientific analysis of these observations thanks to a sustained increase in quality and spatial resolution. The high temporal coverage attained by amateur astronomers collaborating with scientists allows detecting rare events in the atmospheres of different planets. In particular, high-atmosphere phenomena in Mars, possibly caused by solar activity, and meteor impacts in Jupiter have been observed serendipitously in the last decade. Here we review the contribution of amateur astronomers to these two fields. Coronal Mass Ejections arriving to Mars under favorable observing conditions can be predicted after observations of the Sun, and their possible effect on Mars upper atmosphere can be monitored with small telescopes. Impacts in Jupiter of two different classes can be discovered by amateur astronomers: intermediate size impacts big enough to leave a debris field on its atmosphere (150-m size objects before the impact), and fireballs caused by objects of 5–20 m producing short-lived flashes in video observations of the planet. In this regard, we present a software tool designed to analyze video observations of Jupiter and Saturn that should help to find new impact flashes on the giant planets.
Highlights
Amateur astronomers operating small-size telescopes contribute to the regular observation of the Solar System with high-quality data and with far more observing time than the combination of all professional telescopes
The last Mars opposition in July 2018 attracted a high interest of the amateur observers due to the favorable conditions of the opposition with Mars reaching 24.3 arcsec in diameter
This opposition occurred at solar minimum, but the two Mars oppositions in October 2020 and December 2022 will result in high-quality observations of the planet due to its large apparent size (Fig. 2)
Summary
Amateur astronomers operating small-size telescopes contribute to the regular observation of the Solar System with high-quality data and with far more observing time than the combination of all professional telescopes. In July 2009 Jupiter was hit by an object with an estimated size of 500-m (Sánchez-Lavega et al, 2010) that left a dark debris field on the atmosphere This impact was first observed by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley (Australia), and quickly followed-up by Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations (Hammel et al, 2010) and a range of large telescope facilities (de Pater et al, 2010). The combined analysis of the ensemble of these observations results in an increased estimation of the impact rate with respect to previous works (Sánchez-Lavega et al, 2010; Hueso et al, 2013, 2018b) Unexpected events like these (high plumes on Mars, dark debris fields on Jupiter and flashes on Jupiter video observations) cannot be predicted and their discovery requires large amounts of observing time that are generally only available to the ensemble of amateur astronomers observing the planets. We discuss ways to maximize the outcome of such observations
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