Observed Uranus and Jupiter this morning. Forecasts were favourable for good seeing, so went to bed straight after work, set the alarm for 3am (I actually can wake up if its to do something I enjoy
) I took the scope out after I got back from work so by the time I began the session it has been cooling for nearly 4 hours.
Seeing proved to be very good. Uranus was excellent, but by the time I got to Jupiter, it seemed to be patchy but still managed some nice views. The defocused image of Jupiter still boiled a bit, so clearly it could've been better.
Scope: 8" F/6 dob
Time: 3am- sunrise
Seeing: up to 8/10
Started with
Uranus. Seeing was good enough that I could use 375x on the 8" dob with a nice crisp greenish-blue disk. Some people claim they can see markings on Uranus, I couldn't see any, just a uniformly coloured disk. The planet was located on the 'border' of a triangle bounded by 3 stars.... looking it up in Cartes Du Ciel, it turns out one of these "stars" is actually Titania, presently at mag 14.0! Not bad considering the moonlight and only 8" aperture. Difficult to glimpse ofcourse, but at 480x the moon was held quite easily when concentrating on the area.
By the time I got to
Jupiter, seeing was a bit more sketchy with some rough periods, but seemed to calm down towards sunrise when a fair bit of very low contrast festoon activity in the EZ popped in and out of view. Fairly crisp image at 240x. The moons were obvious disks, with Io showing a ruddy orange type colour. The SEB was notably broad and diffuse unlike in recent years.
We'll let my sketch do the rest of the talking
details ... start 5:35am / Finish 5:50am, (19.35/19.50 UT)
Telescope: 8" F/6 dob
Magnification: 240x
Seeing: 7/10