Qualia

Lovely report, Stu and thank you for taking the time to write this up. I agree that smaller scopes can be a lot less fag, especially fracs which are almost just set up and go; no cooling down, no fiddling with collimation etc.

Good luck with the little one and let us know how everything goes on that front :-)

Thank you for the kind comments. I hope you have a great time and the best of weather, Cotterless. And to Arrayschism, aye - long live eighteenth/nineteenth century stargazing :-) 

Thank you so much for you kind comments.

Thank you, Hawksmoor. I bet your grandchildren loved the experience. Like Dante's best there is something fascinating about entering deep into the underworld.

Thank you all for you kind words and thoughts. I am truly touched by your guys' spirit and willingness to animate and encourage others. I am indeed lucky to have found folk like you. Thank you again. Thank you all for being so thoughtful.

Excellent idea. I think it will also serve as a fruitful learning aid, for amalgamating and condensing notes is a good method of revision. I look forward to reading your posts.

Ay, outstanding.

Great stuff, Mike.

Ay, absolutely amazing art-work here, Mike. It's an inspiration to everyone. Maybe, if ever you could be bothered, a little thread on art class basics would be lovely. Something to help us aspiring novices reach mid-way this kind of standard you're setting.

I'm really glad the 4" achro is living up to its duties and I reckon it will truly serve you well. Seems to make a great combo; big dob, little frac.

Excellent sketch, Col and the attention to detail and shading is outstanding. Lara is certainly coming up trumps.

I personally feel it might not have been such a bad thing that the planned night didn't work out. I feel that a good night with the mistress on a single object or two, paying attention and trying to tweak from the given image the best we can is a lot more fruitful than a run around twenty objects without much care or attention.

I don't know if it helps, but I don't really bother with a rubber. I 'sketch 'blind' with very little light and so what I have found helpful with Jupiter is instead of pencils, a reasonably thick blending stub. I load the corner of the page or a spare slip of paper with graphite from a 4B or 6B and gently tone in what I am seeing.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your art work and informative report and I look forward to more.

Nice report and start to the New Year, Tony. Look forward to more installments as and when they come.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts, words and support.

Thumbs up to all of you.

Thank you all for your kind words and support

I hope you all the best with your recovery, Hawksmoor.

Thank you for your kind words, Brantuk and good luck with your Tal modifications. Let us know how you get along and what you think of this little Russian gem.

The thanks is all mine for such generous and kind thoughts as yours, Nightfisher. Makes everything that much more better.

As a new comer to white light observing, I was intrigued to read, "Forecast was for sunny and clear skies yesterday evening and this morning" and was wondering were these the best time to conduct one's solar observations and if so, why? Is it due to the day not yet being so hot, or does it have to do with more mundane matters like working timetables, hours and the such?

Other than that, great read and thank you for sharing your insights with us, Jonathan.

Thank you for the replies, Saddo and Mark.

I apologise for the late reply, but I've been away and am back for a day and then off again for another week or so (until 27th or so).

Mark, I jot on the rough sketches the colour I see and I usually do it with a little code, or just writing it up:

H = a Hint of

D = a Darker / Deeper shade of

L = a Lighter / Paler shade of

B = Bright

P = Primary star

S = Secondary star

Little initials indicate the colour:

b = blue, r = red, w = white, y = yellow, and so on.

Sometimes I don't really understand what I've written the day after viewing. I'll have something like, a deeper shade of blue and on the night that was written everything makes sense, but the next day it could mean anything, so I often have to go back to the star and write more notes on it. Of particular note was the difficulty in capturing the stricking beauty of Gamma Andromedae, a double which ought to be as well known and popular as Albireo.

Forgot to mention the orbital times for the 4 Galilean Moons, so here goes:

Orbital Period

Ganymede: 7.15 days (about 7 days, 3 hours and 36 minutes).

Callisto: 16.69 days (about 16 days, 16 hours and 33 minutes).

Io: 1.77 days (about 1 day, 18 hours and 28 minutes).

Europa: 3.55 days (about 3 days, 13 hours and 12 minutes).

Jupiter

Jupiter hardly needs an introduction. It is the largest planet in the Solar System with over two and a half times the mass of all the other planets combined and in which you could fit as many as 1,300 Earths.

In times of yesterday, Jupiter was the supreme god for the Romans (in Greek he is known as Zeus). He was the King of Kings, personifying the divine right of rule and authority, law, justice and government. He was typically identified with a thunderbolt and the eagle, the Aquila, which the Roman Legion adopted as the symbol for their own war flag, or standard.

Although much has been written of Jupiter, we can point out the following highlights:

Orbit

Jupiter is the fastest spinning planet in the Solar System and lies anything between 925 (Aphelion) to 630 (Perihelion) million kilometers from Earth. Due to its slight axis tilt, neither of its hemispheres points markedly towards or away from the sun and in consequence, Jupiter does not appear to have any obvious season.

Structure

We can imagine Jupiter as essentially a huge ball of gas with four main structures.

The outer layer is a gaseous state made up of mainly hydrogen (90%) and helium (9%) where temperatures fall to around -110ºC. As we move downwards, pressure, density and temperature increase, so by about 7,000km deep the hydrogen and helium acts like a liquid gas reaching temperatures of about 2,000ºC and by about 14,000km deep, they have risen to over 5,000ºC and the hydrogen has compacted into molten metal. Deep inside, at a depth of about 60,000km, there is probably a solid core of metal and rock compounds.

Atmosphere

The mass of Jupiter’s atmosphere is made up of about 75% hydrogen, 24% helium, with the remaining one percent consisting of other compounds and elements, such as methane, ammonia and water. As these elements and compounds condense, different coloured clouds are formed giving Jupiter its distinctive appearance. As the circulating air falls, for example, it heats up creating those rusty brown regions known as belts, as it rises again it begins to cool giving Jupiter those creamy bands known as zones.

Weather

As already suggested, due to Jupiter’s tilt, the planet doesn’t appear to have any distinct season. Nevertheless, the rising and falling air produces winds which reach in the excess of 400kph. Solar heat, the winds and Jupiter’s spin combine to produce huge storms, the smallest of which would be apocalyptic on Earth. Some of these storms last only days, others endure for centuries, like the Great Red Spot, a high pressure storm.

Rings and Magnestic Fields

Jupiter’s ring system was discovered in 1979 by images taken by Voyager 1. It is thin and very faint and is composed of dust strewn from Jupiter’s four inner moons of which Io is one. Jupiter’s magnetic field is the strongest of any planet, about 20,000 times that of Earth’s.

Moons

Jupiter has around 60 moons most of which have been discovered since 2000. Only 38 of them have been named and in all cases after the god’s descendents and those who attended him well, including his many lovers. The four largest moons were the first moons to be discovered after the Earth’s in 1610. That chilly January evening, Galileo pointed his small refractor at Jupiter and in that moment the 2,000 year old Aristotelian truth that all worlds revolved around the Earth essentially fall apart.

The Four Galilean Moons

Ganymede

Ganymede is the largest of Jupiter’s moons with a diameter of just over 5,000km, meaning that it is bigger that either Pluto or Mercury and just a little smaller than Mars. It is made up of mainly rock and ice, orbits at a distance of about 1 million km from Jupiter and is named after the cupbearer of the Olympian gods.

Callisto

Callisto is the second-largest moon and again is made up mainly of ice and rock. Its distance from Jupiter is just under 2 million km and was named after one of Zeus’ lovers.

Io

Io is just a little larger than our own moon and orbits Jupiter at just a little greater distance, about 422 thousand km. Close up images of Io show it looking like a pizza, a highly coloured world of volcanic eruptions, pits, lava flows and high-reaching plumes. At its volcanic hotspots, temperatures can reach to over 1,200ºC whilst elsewhere, in less active terrain, they can drop to as much as -150ºC. Io was named after another of Zeus’ lovers whom he changed into a cow to hide from his wife, Hera.

Europa

Europa is another ice-covered ball of rock with a diameter of about 3,000km and a distance from Jupiter of about 670 thousand km. Although the smallest of the moons, it is probably one of the most fascinating objects in the solar system. Below its covering crust of ice are seas and oceans estimated to contain more liquid than Earth’s combined and is believed to be potentially a haven for life, so much so, that when it was known that the Galileo space probe at the end of its mission in 2003 could collide with the moon and possibly contaminate or destroy life, it was put on a collision course with Jupiter. In ancient Greek myth, Europa was another lover of Zeus.

Of course I don't mind, Lawrence. Thank you for taking the time to post. It is always a pleasure to read and even more so when what is supplied is as informative and thoughtful as your own post.

The thank you, then, is all mine :-)

Ay, it does make viewing a pleasure when evening temperatures are really quite mild and the winter months don't fill up with clouds too often. Thank you for your kind comment, Folkert.

Thanks for the comment, Scoobee and I'd be interested to hear what you did see when viewing NGC 7510. I found it quite easy to find and very bright and was shocked at first at just how much of that nebula-like cloud shines forth. Nothing at all like a nebula itself. Are you sure you came across the same object?

Anyway

The set up is nothing more than is written. I view from a high-rise roof top in a Spanish city which is surrounded by desert lands and mountain tops at about 2am/3am in the morning. I'll spend a good hour or so just observing and jotting dots on a piece of paper and more often than not, return to the site the following evening to make sure I've captured everything.

I'll scan the image into the computer and tidy up the stars and shadings. Basically, that consists of rubbing out the irregular star-blobs and making them into single focuses of light. I've played around with different techniques and although a very fine tipex type of pen and chalked brush on black paper looks better in the original when it comes to scanning it in, a lot is lost. So with these type of star-shots, I just do it in pencil on white paper and invert the positive image. Light grey shadings come out as clouds, fine black pencil dots come out as white stars!

And that's about it. I'm also blessed with deep blue skies during most of the year and a gentle cooling breeze running under cloudless and super dry evening skies, night, after night, after night. Hope that helps. If you need anymore info on this, just drop me a line.

Thank you for your kind words, TingTing. It's a sketch I made at the eyepiece; pencil in hand, bike torch gritted between my teeth, and other hand keeping the scope aligned as the stars drift away to the west. Quite a fun game, but I like it. Later I scan it into the computer, and make a few touches with Paint.Net a free software program.

Great stuff, gentlemen and thank you for the input. I especially liked your report, Ldunn and will try again when darker nights begin. And Mark, once again, thank you so much for your kind support. Your comments and attention make everything that bit more special. Thank you.