Jupiter shadow transit

[JeremyS]

A few members of Chester Astronomical Society gathered at our Chairman's farm this evening to watch the shadow transit of Io. Following a colourful sunset we managed about an hour on Jupiter. Seeing was variable, but we picked the shadow transit up from near the start and followed it almost half way across before cloud obscured. Also had a look at Saturn, but only about 8 deg high - nice for everyone to see the rings, though.

[FenlandPaul]

Looks like a lovely location, Jeremy! 

[JeremyS]

Here's a pic of the early arrivals at the observing field. My C9.25 in the centre.

[John]

Nice location Jeremy

Are there a lot of active observers and imagers in the Chester AS ?

With Bristol AS, athough we have healthy membership numbers overall, not many actually go out to observe or image or own any equipment to do so beyond binoculars. 

[JeremyS]

1 hour ago, John said:

Nice location Jeremy

Are there a lot of active observers and imagers in the Chester AS ?

We are very lucky that our Chairman allows us to use his field to observe from. Great horizons, although some glow from Chester a couple of miles north.

Like many local AS's, many of our members simply enjoy coming along to the talks. We have a hard core of observers who get together from time to time. We also have quite a few imagers and even one who is a highly advanced spectroscopist, SGL's very own @andrew s

Another remarkable thing is that our membership has ballooned over the last 4 or 5 years and we are pleased to count quite a few women and young people as members. So much so that at some meeting we struggle to accommodate everyone - nice problem to have 🙂. We can't quite work out why this has happened, but it's a trend we are happy to see 🙂

It's a couple of our newer members that organise these observing session by putting out announcements to the membership via text and email.

One of the best moments last night was when a young women thanked me for giving her very first view of Saturn and its rings - something that had been on her "must do list". Makes it all worthwhile 🙂

 

 

[andrew s]

@JeremyS is too modest to mention his own excellent record in advanced photometey.

Regards Andrew 

Edited July 7, 2019 by andrew s

[John]

Nice transit events happening just now. Europa is moving towards the limb as it ends it's transit, it's shadow is showing nicely around 2/3rds of the way towards the other limb and the GRS is well onto the disk too. Jupiter's alt is diminishing from here now so the atmosphere is gradually reducing the contrast of the features but it's nice anyhow.