Yay! Great Red Spot!

[DevonSkies]

So I took my Startravel 102 grab-and-go scope out last night to take a look at Jupiter at about 10pm-10.30pm. Despite the less-than-ideal equipment (the 102mm f/5 achromat works best on wide fields), I had a nice sharp, albeit small, view of Jupiter in my 5mm BST eyepiece between the clouds. As usual the two main cloud bands were visible, but this time, after observing Jupiter several times over the last few months, I finally saw the Great Red Spot (or should I say Great Beige Spot). Result! The ST102 didn't deliver much contrast, but it was definitely there. I tried a Baader Contrast Booster filter to tame the CA, but apart from removing the violet halo I'm not convinced it made much difference.

I really need a decent planetary grab-and-go. Yes, my 10" Dob is great on the planets, but it takes well over an hour to cool and it's a pain to keep nudging the mount at high magnifications. I'm very tempted by a SW100ED.

[Linda]

Congratulations. I also hope to see it soon. I looked at Jupiter yesterday at about the same time, but couldn't see fine detail. Maybe because of the very hard wind... the telescope was shaking a lot at the time the Jupiter was so high that I started looking at it.

[laudropb]

Well done. Your first view of the GRS is always a special moment.

[John]

Congratulations on catching the GRS !

I caught the last part of the GRS transit across the face of Jupiter last night as well - it seemed quite a deep dark red colour with my ED120 refractor at 180x although slightly smaller currently than at the last opposition. I could also see 6 belts and darkened zones at the polar regions. The bands seemed pale brown / rust against the cream of the zones between them. There were a couple of plumes / festoons traversing the equatorial zone but they were pretty hard to see and "came and went" with the seeing.

 

 

[chiltonstar]

I caught the GRS too last night with my 180 Mak - to me, it appeared brick red. Definitely a bit redder this year than last year's salmon pink.... I waited up and caught the shadow transit a bit later which was also impressive, as the seeing had improved a little to 4/5.

Chris

[Size9Hex]

Superb :-)

I've had Jupiter in the scope half a dozen times now, and the spot is always looking the other way!