[acropolite (Phil)]

Set up all my gear last night and stayed out until almost 2am (DST). Jupiter, although at approximately 40 degrees was swimming in turbulence (I have a river to the east and seeing is never steady in that direction). As usual, I left my gear out, thinking I might wake before dawn and catch that magic seeing that only seems to happen in the few hours before daylight. The sun beat me out of bed and at 7:30am I decided to take a final peek at Jupiter with the 8 inch LX which had been faithfully tracking all night. Jupiter was still dead centre after 5 hours and, with the sun a couple of degrees above the horizon, still visible, and rock steady with a 26mm EP at around 76x mag. This was of no surprise as I have seen Jupiter several times after dawn. Since the image was so steady I popped in a 7mm Burgess planetary (285x) and to my surprise the image was still rock steady and the detail was the best I have seen.