Early Jupiter

[Guest telescope4u]

I was out last night and the seeing was around 60%, not bad but could be better. To make matters slightly worse the wind was a bit gusty to say the least, and most objects didn't stay still or central for long. But getting out in reasonable conditions Just for a one night ,(after the diabolical weather we had), was a nice feeling.

Anyway I decided to set up 2 scopes a 5" Frac and 12" SCT. I thought it would be nice to get some wider field views from the frac and let the SCT do some all round work. It was a nice combination. Saturn and Mars looked good, not perfect, through both scopes. And the frac was giving some nice views of clusters. After around 3 - 4 hours of star and cluster hoping the wind was starting to get on my nerves, I was getting colder and the lure of doing some astro photography in a warm shed was calling me. So I put the scope SCT back on Saturn. So I sat in shed watching Saturn on a PC monitor, shaking around with in the wind. It wasn't Ideal and it made the imaging hard. I did around 4 pics of Saturn, but wasn't happy with any of them.

So I made the decision to finish for the evening bit leave both scopes out, in the vague hope that I may feel like getting up around 5.30am to have a quick look at Jupiter.

As it happens I awoke around 6am had a cup of tea an went into the garden to see what the seeing was like and to see if the wind had dropped. Luckily enough there was no wind and the sky looked around 90% seeing. Although dawn looked as though it was going to sneak up on me.

I first looked through the frac and WOW. Crisp, clear and sharp. It looked like a a different version of our moon with it's little satellites floating around like busy flies. Awesome, truly awesome.

So I quickly switched to the SCT (very quick alignment, tracked well though). Double Wow. It does this to me every time It's been in hibernation. Stunning, amazing, breath-taking and blumming marvelous.

We all know Jupiter, But the reappearance every year is like seeing for the first time. And we all know what that is like.

I had a good 80 Min's of wonderful viewing before Dawn woke me from a sublime trance. I was a beauty to behold. No matter how early it was it was worth it.

[Grant]

Great report there mate, really really can't wait to see it myself now!!!

Going to try and get access to some of the Uni telescopes, they have them on top of a really tall uni building