Mental Magnification for Jupiter and M42

[Moonshane]

Jupiter looked good last night and although I have lots of college work to do this weekend I decided that after finishing yesterday at about 7pm, I'd stick the scope out and have a good session on the main current planetary spectacle.

I used my 6" f11 dob on my home made equatorial platform and the tracking this gives really does help make it all quite comfortable viewing at higher magnifications.

Whilst the planet had the 'boring' side towards me. I managed to see nice levels of detail in periods of good seeing as it approached the zenith. The two main SEB bands, the NEB, a partial equatorial band and the dusky caps were all seen well along with a couple of additional thinner bands and rougher edges to the main bands indicating swirls of turbulence in the cloud patterns.

Part way through the night I saw the orange moon that I presume was Io disappear around the disc and then reappear later in the evening like a pimple on the surface.

As the seeing was good (I was achieving good images at 200x) and I was using my equatorial platform, I decided to crack out the Nagler zoom which gives 267x-533x with my 6" scope. Not usually worth it but the image was actually OK at the lower end and not as bad as expected at 533x. A stable (in the field) Jupiter image filling much of the view is a sight to behold even when the view is not as sharp as when magnification is more real. Does anyone else ever try 'wrong' magnifications?

Beautiful evening and great to see the planet so well.

Rounded off the night with a quick look at the Orion Nebula at 200x - great to get right in there and M35 at 50x, both of which were excellent even with restricted aperture. For the first time in my 6" scope, I managed to detect M35's NGC companion cluster 2158.

[knobby]

Sounds like a good night Shane!