[Shiraz (Ray)]

Hi

had a short break between rain and the seeing was above average. The break came out of nowhere and there was no time to collimate (went with the basic laser collimation) or to cool the scope properly, so the results were better than expected.

This also provided another look at the equatorial spot mentioned in earlier threads. Along with Damian Peach's image of the 19th (link in previous post, thanks Trevor), there are now 4 images showing a spot in the same general region over almost 3 weeks from June7 to June25. I plotted out the WINJUPOS system 1 longitudes vs time and there seems to be a reasonable argument that it is the same spot drifting around the planet at an almost constant rate of about 28 kph relative to system 1 (the spot is moving against the planet's rotation). Either that or the system 1 rotation assumption (10h 14m) does not exactly describe the current actual rotation at the spot latitude (between 6 and 9 degrees North) of 10h 14m 28s. It also appears to have a slight Northwards drift, consistent with true motion. The spot is not particularly bright or large (looks like it would fit within the Cassini division at ~4700km - many times larger than hurricane Katrina), but it is persistent and has been a lot of fun to hunt down.

the greyscale spot images have been excessively processed to enhance the spot, but it can also just be seen in the colour image.

thanks for looking. Regards ray