Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinderboxsky
Hi Adam,
I hope you are successful with the double transit. It is about to happen here but we are completely clouded out. At least I saw last week’s one.
I will be interested to hear how you go.
Steve.
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Steve,
Sorry it took me so long to respond. Busy weekend and busy week.
It was great, the GRS was plumb in the middle at the start just as the first moon ( Io I think ) was about to ingress with Europa about an hour behind.
My brother in law arrived just as I finished the 2 star align on the 14" goto. We mostly observed at 317x. We spent the next 2 hours marvelling at the dynamism of this planet. You can really tell how fast Jupiter spins on its axis. The detail in the wake behind the GRS is just awesome. We also saw a prominent spot on the north equatorial band, from memory it was on a meridian east of the GRS . I meant to look up what it was after, but like I said its been busy.
It wasn't perfect, we had to observe between the clouds but they were fast moving so never covered J for too long. Seeing wasn't the best. But heck, it's been such a crap observing year so far it was just great to be out there. Moreover the BiL and I are both patient observers, so even in poor seeing you'll will have moments of good seeing and those views were spectacular! The 14 aids that by being a tracking scope it does a very subtle dob nudge
.
At some point we wondered what the view in a smaller scope would be like. So... why speculate?
I dragged the 10" pusher* out at about 11. From then on we were able to swap observing through both tubes. Through the ten we were obliged to view at 200x.
At 200x the view was more consistent but the moments of great seeing at 317x were really good. It was fun to compare.
It was the BiL's first ever double transit, and only my second, so very satisfying we could make that happen.
One last point, we kept io in view for about a third of the way after ingress. after that the contrast became too low to see anymore. We shut up shop 30 mins after Europa crossed in front of the planet.
Awesome night. In some ways it was good that it was partly cloudy because that kept us from going to the dark sky sight and that meant we just focused on Jupiter the whole time. At the dark sky spot the temptation to look at DSOs is too much.
Cheers
* I move the 10" pusher on one of those hand trolleys you can get at bunnings for $24, without having to ever disassemble anything. It literally takes me all of 2 minutes. Stark contrast to the laborious process with the bulky 14"!