Who's out, how's the seeing?

[Fozzie]

I'd like to report it's as jumpy as a box of frogs over north west leeds, not carrying to much mag at all.. struggling to get over 100x on Jupiter.. but I'll hang around for a go at Saturn!

Oh and the midgies are out too... still got scabs from the last late night observing in shorts n flip flops!

[John]

Seeing is AAA+++ here tonight. 200-250x on Jupiter, 300x-400x on the Moon so far with superb detail

Can't wait for Saturn, might even wait up for Mars !

(scope in use here tonight the 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor)

Sorry to hear about the Leeds area - hope it improves

[Fozzie]

Show off...

Glad someone's got the views... to be fair it's not all bad, the kids are sleeping, heck the wife's had an early night too, I'm sat out with a little glass of Red just watching the summer triangle pop into view..

[John]

45 minutes ago, Fozzie said:

..... I'm sat out with a little glass of Red just watching the summer triangle pop into view..

Sounds very civilised - I may join you

[tonylumley]

just a couple from tonight with my Nikon and 600mm sigma lens, before I got savaged by the biting insect brigade, can't believe I ran out of Jungle formula too!!

[Paz]

Its been ok in the midlands, the moon was poor but higher altitude targets were ok.

[Helen]

Got this Jupiter - not bad considering how low it is for me (and over a housing estate!) 

Moon was pretty poor though...

[chiltonstar]

Excellent near the zenith, appalling on Saturn! Layers of warm air near the ground causing all kinds of ghastliness - Cassini barely visible.

Chris

 

[Stu]

9 hours ago, John said:

Seeing is AAA+++ here tonight. 200-250x on Jupiter, 300x-400x on the Moon so far with superb detail

Can't wait for Saturn, might even wait up for Mars !

(scope in use here tonight the 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor)

Sorry to hear about the Leeds area - hope it improves

Sounds pretty amazing John. You do seem to be in a pocket of good seeing at the moment, it has not been very good here unfortunately.

[geoflewis]

Seeing was pretty good in my neck of Norfolk last night. I got a neighbour round to take in some views of the Moon and Jupiter through the C14, with the best views of both at around x140 in a clear blue sky around 9pm before the Sun had set. He stayed for about an hour, was thrilled and wants to come back, to which I said yes of course. After he left I set up for some grabs on Jupiter, which started out well, but the seeing deteriorated, plus my scope stated to head below the obs wall, so I thought I try my first look at saturn this year (NB when imaging the planets I avoid meridian flips due to mirror flop and possible loss of collimation, so I'm losing these low planets pretty quickly after they transit). I stayed with Saturn a while including some pics of which the IR filter really cut through the seeing. I'll try to get some processed images posted soon, but there's too much to do in the garden during the day and I already have a backlog of images building. Lastly as I was packing everything away I saw Mars rising in the east, boy is that bright this year and going to get bigger and brighter too. I took in my first views of Mars this year at the eyepiece, but they weren't the best so I decided to pass on any pics. By now it was 2:30 am and the NE sky  was already very bright pre dawn, so I headed for bed.

[Fozzie]

38 minutes ago, chiltonstar said:

Excellent near the zenith, appalling on Saturn! Layers of warm air near the ground causing all kinds of ghastliness - Cassini barely visible.

Perfectly sums the night.. 

The seeing got marginally better as the light faded and Saturn rose a bit higher, it was terrible on Jupiter earlier although I'm sure I picked up some undulating in the NEB briefly.

Caught one or two glimpses of Cassini div but other than that I spent a bit of time with the bins looming overhead, the coat hanger, and stars around Sadr up to deneb were lovely..

Caught mars rising around 1am.. really brightened in the last few weeks..

 

[Stu]

10 minutes ago, Fozzie said:

Caught mars rising around 1am.. really brightened in the last few weeks..

Yes,  i spotted it at 1.30 and was amazed how bright it is. Makes total sense of course but because it is in the morning sky I haven't seen it recently.

[kerrylewis]

Got up at 2.00 for Saturn and Mars with the Vixen 150 set up.  Seeing was only average with Saturn only occasionally ‘clicking’ and showing the Cassini division and some subtle banding. Three moons visible but I need to check which ones apart from Titan! 

 As Mars clears my garage roof it is a stunning sight naked eye - extraordinarily bright. Only average through the scope though-polar cap visible but not as clear as it has been , and just hints of dark features. Maybe the dust storm is affecting things but I suspect it was just the seeing. Good to see the disc getting larger nevertheless and looking good for opposition. 

I used a contrast booster filter at times. I find that it slightly dims the brightness and can enhance detail but this morning was not the best time to assess it. I didn’t use the ADC but will try it another time. I find that there is not much improvement if the seeing is not steady. 

[geoflewis]

Cloudy here this evening so I got to catch up on some of processing backlog. Here are my latest Jupiter and first Saturn of the year from last night (22 June)

Jupiter is RGB-RGB-RGB processed in AS3!, Registax, WinJupos and PS. Saturn is 3xIR-RGB.  I did a 2nd run on Saturn, but haven't processed those yet - just completed so added it below....

I changed the capture ROI between the two runs and only retained best 10% , whereas V1 was best 25% of each AVI.

Saturn is going to be difficult this year, but that one turned out not too bad for only ~13 degrees altitude and hopefully there is better to come...

Cheers, Geof

[scarp15]

It has been OK here for an hours observing, set up on allotment again with 85mm refractor. Some thin wispy cloud present at times, lunar phase lit the Jura mountains region and Copernicus. Some hints of the South Temperate and faint North Temperate belt regions on Jupiter, a fairly prominent festoon on the NEB and just caught the dark toned GRS. 

[Wardr77]

Seeing was average last night here, Jupiter was 'boiling' a bit; BUT I was transfixed to the eyepiece as I saw quite clearly Io's shadow (think it was Io's!) on Jupiter's face. Then as I observed, an imperceptible pimple grew on the side of Jupiter which after only a matter of minutes separated, and this was obviously Io! Celestial mechanics in action and it happened so quickly. This took place almost dead on midnight last night. It was great to see, a memorable moment.