I set up my 7 inch Starmaster near home last night. The skies stayed unexpectedly clear and I had a great time watching the lastest Io transit of Jupiter. This was one of the prettiest transits I have seen. The bright moon and its inky black shadow were obviously further apart than they had been early Tuesday morning. It has now been just two days since Jupiter's opposition, and the moon and it shadow appeared to be almost in contact. The shadow was now mostly round, however, and on the following rather than preceding side of Io.
The moon and its shadow were suspended above the Southern Equatorial belt of Jupiter. What made this particularly interesting to watch was that when the transit began, Io and its shadow were positioned right above the Great Red Spot, which was just rotating into view. The moon and shadow were suspended right above the junction between the GRS and the belt, a beautiful placement that I have never seen before. As the transit progressed, it was easy to see that the moon rotated across the face of Jupiter faster than the GRS. The twin discs of bright moon and dark shadow gradually pulled ahead of the big ruddy swirl, and by the end of the transit were separated by a distance greater than the diameter of the GRS itself.
The combination of light, shadow, and swirl were very striking, and I showed them to three or four neighbors who also happened by the scope. Everybody loved both Jupiter and Saturn. With both planets high and near the Pleiades and Hyades, this is a great time of year to point out astro-sights to others.
I spent some time chasing down double stars and bright open clusters during a couple hours of checking back and forth on the progress of the transit. Seeing was intermittent but 118 Taurus was an easy pair. Try 68 Taurus or 47 Taurus for more of a challenge. Both have 2.5 to 3 mag differences between primary and secondary star, and are close enough (1.3 to 1.5 arcseconds), that I had to fiddle a bit with collimation and magnification before I finally got a clear view. Theta and omega Auriga also had big brightness differences, but wider and easier separations. Theta is particuarly striking, and worth a look if you like both brightness and color contrasts in double stars.