January 14 Jupiter

by Morris Jones

It'd been a full evening, and Jane and I had been circulating between working on the February issue of our club newsletter and getting eyepiece views at the AP180. It was one of those calm nights between the storms, and the sky was full of shallow sky targets.

We'd spent the early part of the evening on the Moon and Saturn, and I know Jane will have a report on those. I finally got to nudge the big scope over towards Jupiter.

At about midnight between January 14 and 15, the red spot was prominent on the limb and advancing towards the meridian. Seeing was very good to excellent, and the disk was full of good detail.

While the red spot hollow was prominent, I didn't see any darker features within it.

The SEB had a darkening region just south and in advance of the red spot hollow. There was a nice barge in the NEB.

The elusive equatorial band was visible, but it wasn't a continuous line. It was more of a dashed line, with prominent dark rods alternating with white.

Right at the boundary of the North Polar Region and the North Temperate Zone there was another of these dark rods. It extended east-west across the meridian at about midnight local (0800 utc), about 15% of a Jupiter diameter. Very prominent.

I'd never seen those rod features before!