[Lvas] Observing Aug 1

[Fred Rayworth]

Dave,

 

Excellent report! I almost dragged my 16" out but I still had gusty winds over here on the east side and was also too tired, so I blew it off. I was out Friday night at 10:30 and never saw Jupiter from my back yard. I've been wanting to catch the black spot but it sounds like I'll miss another one if it is fading like you say.

 

Fred


 
> Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 12:10:35 -0700
> To: lvas at lvlug.org
> From: Yahoo at awit.com
> Subject: [Lvas] Observing Aug 1
> 
> Well, if you weren't out last night watching Jupiter, you missed it all!
> 
> I decided to try working with the club's 24" telescope again last 
> night. My laser collimator having died (and Scope City out of 
> stock), I collimated visually. I wound up with pretty good star 
> images, and could even see the diffraction spikes from the secondary spider.
> 
> Jupiter climbed above a neighbor's house by 9:30, but I had to wait a 
> half hour or so for it to get high enough that the heat from the 
> rooftop was not so disturbing. At first, it appeared as a typical 
> "Jupiter and its four moons" situation. About 10:30, I noticed what 
> looked like a moon shadow on the planet. I punched up the power and 
> noticed a little bump on the limb. I began to wonder if I was 
> actually seeing the four moons. So I checked my Skymap software, to 
> see what was going on, and found that the "fourth moon" was actually 
> a star, and Ganymede had been hiding behind the planet.
> 
> On a whim, I checked CalSky, which listed the following events:
> 
> 22:18 Europa shadow ingress
> 22:28 Red Spot Transit
> 22:32 Ganymede occultation reappearance
> 22:56 Europa transit begin
> 00:22 Europa inferior conjunction
> 00:28 Black Spot transit (calculated based on info from SpaceWeather.com
> 00:37 Io eclipse begin
> 
> Having seen the Black Spot on Thursday, I wanted to see it again, 
> especially with the larger scope. So I decided to make a night of it.
> 
> The seeing was good for the most part. A lot of moving the telescope 
> to let Jupiter drift across the field, waiting for those 10 to 15 
> seconds of clarity. I could see Europa's shadow quite easily, and 
> used it as a gauge for clarity and focus. When I would see it 
> clearly, I would look for the Red Spot and for Europa. I found a 
> blue filter helped with the Red Spot. I think I could make out 
> Europa against Jupiter, but it was very difficult to see.
> 
> About 23:45, I was able to pick out the Black Spot. I don't know 
> whether it has dissipated, of it the seeing really wasn't as good as 
> last Thursday, or if the telescope collimation was not what I'd 
> hoped, but the spot was much harder to make out, despite having four 
> times the light bucket.
> 
> All in all, a pretty good night. And to top things off, I think I 
> have the scope working to the point where I plan to bring it out to 
> the Red Rocks event on the 15th. This would be the first time this 
> scope has been out to the public in how many years?
> 
> -- David
> 
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