Jupiter 9th July 2007

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

A lack of clouds brought a rush of blood to the head and I grabbed my smallest scope and headed for the hill above my town. I'm 56 degrees north so Jupiter was only about 12-25 degrees above the horizon with the sky still rather blue, since we wont really see dark skies here for some months yet. Got the scope set up at the top of the local hill, about 900' above sea level and dropped in the 28mm first. Seeing was surprisingly good for being so low, so bright and right over the lights of my town, so I ended up using the rather poor 8mm Celestron eyepiece with a LPR filter in place to help out with the skyglow.

3 moons were easily visible, I believe the innermost (Io) was probably out of sight on the far side. The large southern equatorial band was easily visible, and as the night wore on I occasionally caught site of the NEB and one other band as well. Unfortunately the little 80mm ED refractor i was using didn't give enough resolution to check for the great red spot, but it was still probably the best view i've had of the planet all year so I'm still counting this as a win for me. My larger Meade would have shown more detail had I the time to check it out and set it up, but the ED80 did me proud tonight anyway in less than ideal planet-viewing conditions.