Jupiter from the VLT. Credit: ESO
Everyone loves twinkling stars and moonlit nights—EXCEPT astronomers. But astronomers are crafty people, so they’ve come up with ways to mitigate the distortion that Earth‘s thick atmosphere causes for ground based telescopes (from which stars appear to twinkle). And now, a new image-correction technique has delivered the sharpest whole-planet ground-based picture ever. The Very Large Telescope (VLT) performed a record two-hour observation of Jupiter using a breakthrough technique to remove atmospheric blur. And what a result! Just take a look at that gorgeous image…And this new image reveals changes in Jupiter’s smog-like haze, probably in response to a planet-wide upheaval more than a year ago.
