Observing Jupiter 2/9 p.m. and 2/10 a.m.

by Jane Houston Jones

We've had a fantastic string of observing nights here in the San Francico bay area. To cap it off, on Sunday night/Monday morning the seeing was so steady we set up the AP180EDT on the driveway at 10:00 p.m. After watching Jupiter occult Ganymede at 10:39 p.m. PST (06:39 UT) we had four hours until the Great Red Spot transit. I killed time by sketching Jupiter every hour or so. :-)

I didn't redraw the sketches in the morning like I usually do with planetary sketches. Instead, I made one quick rough sketch at the eyepiece, then a final sketch at the eyepiece using just one or two pencils and a stump to smudge things a little bit. So the sketches are a bit rough. I've annotated the sketches with my observations so to avoid duplication, here are just the highlights of each observation. You can read the details with each sketch.

11:00 p.m. Saturn: Subtle notches on the South Equatorial Belt, ringlets in the b-ring. Many belts were easy to see

11:30 p.m. Jupiter: Split on preceeding side SEB rotating off. Barges everywhere

12:41 a.m. Jupiter: Split in on following limb SEB rotating on

1:25 a.m. Jupiter: Dashes (barges or rods) reported by Rich Neuschaefer visible on NPR. Red spot hollow and STB rotating on

2:30 a.m. GRS and white ovals galore

3:05 a.m. Ganymede occultation over. GRS, ovals and a loop festoon, reported also by Dave North same night

3:30 a.m. A final sketch for the night

Here are the sketches: http://www.whiteoaks.com/sketches/planets2.html