The Seeing Is Planetary Quality in Monterey

by Bob Jardine


Peter Natscher wrote:
I can see detail way smaller than Europa's shadow on Jupiter.

Kewl. But did you see Amalthea transit Europa's shadow? According to Starry Night Pro, this event happened just prior to Europa's egress. I don't know how accurate this thing is, and it seems to have gotten the time of Europa's transit wrong by a few minutes, so maybe it didn't really happen. But the simulation of it was fun to watch, so I imagine the real thing would have been pretty spectacular. But you'd need "heck-a-scope", I guess, to actually see such a thing.

I was also out watching the Europa and shadow transits tonight in the backyard in Cupertino with the TV NP-101. The seeing stunk early on, but improved significantly towards the end. After it was over, I did a replay with SNPro, which is when I noticed the Amalthea thing -- I wouldn't have noticed it except that it occurred just minutes prior to Europa's egress, so it was pretty obvious (running the simulation forwards and backwards at 30X time).