Weird Astronomy

Tales of Unusual, Bizarre, and Other Hard to Explain Observations

David A. J. Seargent 2001 BvtnLib 520 SEA

Checked out in a hurry, just before the Covid shutdown. Not really science, mostly a collection of unreplicated anecdotes about observations near the edge of human perception. Now that we can observe the entire sky with CCD cameras, deep memories, and lots of computation, humans can focus on hypotheses based on shared data.

One interesting factoid is that Ganymede may be visible to some unassisted eyes in optimal conditions. The problem is that Jupiter is vastly brighter than Ganymede. This article describes the opportunities and difficulties:

• Glimpsing Jupiter's Moons with the Naked Eye
• Muir, C.
• Journal of the Royal Society of Canada, Vol. 104, No. 3, p.101

It does not cite other papers describe plausible observations, nor do any followup papers cite this one. Reading between the lines, there have been and won't be trustworthy naked eye observations of Jupiter's moons from the Earth's surface. So, this factoid, and this book, is more about the psychology of fallibility and trust.