Jupiter 25/9

[§AB]

Well the weather was temporarily clear so I figured "why not, it's my last chace for a week". Took the 10" Dob outside to cool.

After an hour and 30 of cooling with the fan on, I nudged the collimation into place as good as I can get it by shining my red light on the opening of the cheshire.

Telescope: 10" Newtonian
Seeing: 4/10

As I pointed the scope at Jupiter, it immediately became apparent that the seeing was absolutely no good. Well, I didn't expect much in the first place as that jetstream was over us again. Indeed, when I defocused the planet slightly, the shimmering was crazy! Imagine looking directly above a fire. Any low contrast and delicate feature would be washed right away in these conditions.

At 166x I made out 7 belts and the GRS was present this time. It featured a pale pink colour. I could detect some ruffling in the SEB and NEB in moments of good seeing. I caught a shadow transit of Io, and at 9:29 UT the moon itself emerged from a transit at the planet's eastern limb. The EQ band was very obvious, to the point where I could see it varying in thickness. Didn't see much festoon and white oval activity along the southern fringe of te NEB which I put down to either a quiet day on the planet or the poor seeing.

All in all, the view was pretty good considering the bad conditions. Can there possibly be a a night of good seeing before we lose Jupiter for this year?

[DougAdams]

Good stuff, love those sketches. Transits are great, especially when you can pick the moon's disk against the planet itself. I've seen that a couple of times, when the moon has just disappeared or about to reappear.

[§AB]

Thanks Doug :) one thing that really caught my eye was the EQ band. I've never seen it as well defined as yesterday, even the night before with better seeing and higher mag.

Unfortunately, the poor seeing meant that I couldn't see the moons disk against the planet. I suspect in near-perfect conditions, with magnifications above 200x it would've been possible. (one problem with Jupiter is it doesn't handle anything above 200-250x well).

btw Doug, what telescope did you see it in?

[Dave47tuc]

Nice work Sab.:thumbsup:

I have been reading your work and as usual very well done:thumbsup:

Nice to see the 10" put to better use than when i had it.:)

[DougAdams]

Yeah, you've captured what I've seen of that EQ band very well. A pencil thin streak right across the disk (although it bleeds out at each end in my scope).



8" Celestron Starhopper dob - the old one with the black cardboard/sonotube, now somewhere in the Dandenongs hopefully getting good use.

[§AB]

ah shouldn't be too hard for me then! Just have to know exactly where the moon is I guess.

But, the forecast is a tragedy. Seriously. My head explode when I saw it.
Saturday night is the only chance, the rest is cold, windy, rainy crap for the next 2 weeks :mad: the BOMs prediction of an 80% chance of warmer than normal weather sure as hell isn't coming to fruition in the medium term :sad: