First time view of Jupiter

[scotty38]

As I’ve mentioned many times I’m new to this so last night I stayed up with the intention of seeing Jupiter and Saturn. I didn’t check the time but maybe about 2am and there it was, Jupiter so set up the scope... It was still fairly low at this point but I could just about make out the bands but the moons were clearly visible and I expected to see 4 but I could actually see 5. Io to one side but on the other were 4 objects.

I looked on Sky Safari so was this other object the double star HD 210845?

[Kon]

Fantastic! I saw them for the first time last night as well. Like you I saw Jupiter with 4 moons on one side and 1 on the other, Io as you said.

[John]

Well done for seeing Jupiter !

There are 4 Jovian moons visible in amateur equipment (scopes and binoculars) so the 5th was certainly a star.

HD 210845 was the right brightness and in the position to pass as a "5th moon" early this morning.

 

 

 

 

[scotty38]

3 hours ago, John said:

Well done for seeing Jupiter !

There are 4 Jovian moons visible in amateur equipment (scopes and binoculars) so the 5th was certainly a star.

HD 210845 was the right brightness and in the position to pass as a "5th moon" early this morning.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for that. As a novice it had me scratching my head thinking "I should only be seeing 4 moons...." 🙂

[Kon]

4 hours ago, John said:

There are 4 Jovian moons visible in amateur equipment (scopes and binoculars) so the 5th was certainly a star.

HD 210845 was the right brightness and in the position to pass as a "5th moon" early this morning.

Thanks for the correction! I got fooled to think it was Io. Nice to have your expertise here.

[Nik271]

I got up at 4am today with the goal of observing Jupiter and Saturn and I'm glad I did. The seeing was excellent and Saturn's Cassini division was visible at x170 in my Skymax 127. Jupiter's moon were all on one side to the west of the planet and the outer two, Ganymede and Calisto were very close together, perhaps less than 5'', they looked like a double star. Many cloud belts were visible on Jupiter and some wrinkles in the equatorials belts.

Already I had a better view than all of last year, a good start to the gas giants season!

Edited May 31, 2021 by Nik271

[scotty38]

I had intended staying up last night as I'd have views of Saturn from around 01:30 give or take but the clouds rolled in before 21:00 and will still there at 23:00 so went to bed and set an alarm for 01:00 but it was still cloudy.... It was the same at about 02:30 so I gave up. Glad it worked out for you and I will try again tonight....