GRS central on Jup 15th Aug 20:55 BST

[chiltonstar]

2 hours ago, Geoff Barnes said:

I'm getting cautiously excited! Clear blue skies and gentle winds at 4.30pm, could this be my first chance for 2 months???

GRS due to be centre stage between 9.30pm and 10.30pm, I'm going to throw everything I've got at it up to 375x with the Vixen SLV 4mm and see what's possible.  

....and a Europa transit if I'm not mistaken! Too low for us near the North Pole but you might see it Geoff?

Chris

[Geoff Barnes]

57 minutes ago, chiltonstar said:

and a Europa transit if I'm not mistaken! Too low for us near the North Pole but you might see it Geoff?

Not here Chris, another 12 hours away down here. I'll be happy to see anything after 2 months of cloud to be honest!

Edited August 17, 2019 by Geoff Barnes

[chiltonstar]

38 minutes ago, Geoff Barnes said:

Not here Chris, another 12 hours away down here. I'll be happy to see anything after 2 months of cloud to be honest!

...ah yes, of course! Always a bit difficult to get one's head around the view and timings from the Southern Hemisphere.

Chris

[Geoff Barnes]

Such a shame. It stayed clear, transparency was 7/10 but the wind got up and seeing was atrocious 2/10 at best, very wobbly.

Nevertheless, I persevered and got a few brief glimpses of detail. 375x was hopeless, 300x pretty bad, I ended up with the Morpheus 6.5mm at 230x which was as high as was usable and even my Hyperion zoom at 8mm 187x was sharper but obviously smaller image.

GRS was central and I'm sure I could make out the central darker spot was much larger and more distinct than I recall.

The South Equatorial Belt seemed much thinner than normal and even appeared to be two thin strips with a brighter central divide.

Along the North Equatorial Belt there were two very large dark brown ovals and possibly a third smaller one, certainly a lot of activity going on along there.

Need an up to date image from Avani to see what's going on in detail.

So not an entirely wasted session but so very frustrating with the poor seeing conditions, next chance seems to be next weekend according to the forecast - more snow on Monday!

 

[Stu]

2 minutes ago, Geoff Barnes said:

The South Equatorial Belt seemed much thinner than normal and even appeared to be two thin strips with a brighter central divide.

That's certainly something I've been seeing on recent images Geoff, but have yet to pick up visually from here. Good stuff.

[chiltonstar]

On 16/08/2019 at 08:27, jock1958 said:

I’m intrigued by your DIY azimuth circle for the Skytee 2 & Wixey. Any chance of a pic please @chiltonstar ?

Now posted in DIY forum, as requested! More details available if you need them, and the image of the 360 degree scale I used.

Chris