Yes, it's been done at least once (here is what may be the first and only confirmed detection of Thebe posted to CN), but by pure chance I started my own efforts to do the same just last week even before I found the earlier result from June 2019. In fact, as I was processing my images from last Friday I started a search here on CN for "Thebe" and that's when I first saw Karel's (user KpS) earlier post.
I'm still trying to produce a better result (with my existing data) but here is what I've gotten so far using my 9.25" Celestron EdgeHD and a ZWO ASI183MM camera. It's not pretty and some might dispute that I've recorded anything at all (other than noise), but I've placed a marker next to what COULD be Thebe. It seems to be in the correct location and given the magnitude of the field stars that were also recorded the detection seems plausible.
This is the result from doing a software-based tracking on the predicted location of Thebe and thus it required a prior knowledge of Thebe, so it wouldn't quality as a discovery image (that was done by the Voyager space probe when it flew past Jupiter in 1979). To the best of my knowledge Thebe hasn't been imaged very often by ANY earth-base telescope, but there is a report from the famous Pic du Midi observatory where they used a 1 meter scope to capture both Amalthea and Thebe.
[UPDATE]
I found another paper about the images captured at Pic du Midi and in this they show one of the shots that included both Amalthea and Thebe. It's very sharp but Thebe is pretty difficult to see (IMO). Here is the link: https://www.aanda.or.../aa28246-16.pdf
and reference figure #2.
[/UPDATE]
You will note a lot a faint streaks and blurred spots in my image and those are background stars that moved in relation to Jupiter and Thebe. Amalthea is also visible over on the other side of Jupiter, but blurred since it had relative motion against Thebe.
The greatly overexposed objects in this image are Jupiter (of course) and its moon's Europa and Io (furthest on the left). This is actually from a series of images that I took on Saturday, August 1 when the nearly full moon was just over 4 degrees from Jupiter (i.e. not the best of conditions). I have more subs from that night and also a sequence that was taken under somewhat darker skies on Friday night and I'm pretty sure I can produce a better result using one or the other of those data sets (the below image only used one half of my subs as it was a test to see if my software tracking technique was working).
The below image is the result of an integration of nearly 200 subs that were exposed for 3 seconds each using my 9.25" EdgeHD. No guiding, but the session was tracked with an A-P Mach1GTO mount that was "roughly" polar aligned. The seeing conditions were okay but certainly not great and in addition to the nearly full moon Jupiter was pretty far down to the horizon in the worst part of my red-zone light pollution (right over city center).
I should add that my "detection" lacks some of the verification that I like to present when doing this kind of imaging and you can review my image of Miranda that I took in 2019 to see what I consider to be a valid confirmation of a faint or difficult moon.
If I get a better looking and more certain detection then I'll do a more complete discussion of the software techniques I used to process my images. In the interim, I suggest that everyone go over to Karel's post to see additional comments and details on capturing Thebe.
Attached Thumbnails
Edited by james7ca, 05 August 2020 - 01:37 PM.
