Shadow transit of Ganymede and the first time seeing the Great red spot? Not sure if it actually was the GRS, IMO it wasnt red or great.

[ONIKKINEN]

Observing with an OOUK VX8 fitted with a 2.5x barlow.

 

Started out with the 9mm, as the seeing was dodgy at first or my scope had not fully cooled to ambient yet. Im leaning towards the cooling here since it is 29c inside and 16c outside. I did have the cooling fan on while setting up the mount which usually works but maybe this was too extreme.

 

First time seeing a shadow transit so i didn't know what to expect, not even if its visible, but man it was as obvious as anything can be. Sharp black spot on an otherwise very bright Jupiter. It was so obvious that it was the best marker for seeing whether i was in critical focus or not, very easy to tell the difference! Also this was my first time seeing the GRS, although im not quite sure if that was it. Contrast on other parts of Jupiter was very low, definitely less pronounced than all other atmospheric bands for example and i don't really agree that it was red. Seeing improved consistently as time went on and it was somewhat more obvious towards the end, but not what i expected. As far as i know the GRS is shrinking all the time, i dont think it would be given the same name if it was discovered today.

The great red spot is in my opinion not great or red. It is a spot, ill give it that. Still great to actually see it myself.

[markse68]

It didn't look that red tonight here either. Sometimes it can look vivid orange but tonight when I saw it it was off towards the limb so didn't really stand out. I guess they call it great because of its size- it's a storm larger than our planet!

Mark

[Pixies]

First shadow transit for me too. Jupiter didn't come into view here until 02:00-ish and by then the GRS had gone.

Seeing was good, often great. I've only been doing this for a couple of years and tonight was the best  view of Jupiter that I've had. The shadow/dot was sooo conspicuous, it almost looked 3-D.  I was up to x150 in my 8" dob. and it would have taken more, but I didn't want to spend all my time nudging. I also tried the ST80 but couldn't make out the shadow, even though I new exactly where it should have been. Perhaps I could have spent more time on the little refractor, but the view in the dob was so good!

I waited until 03:00am to try and watch Ganymede itself transit, but almost exactly on-cue, the temp dropped, the wind picked up and the seeing rapidly deteriorated.

But my main memory of tonight won't be the transit, as cool as seeing one for the first time was. It was the view of Jupiter itself. At times it was tack-sharp. I don't know the terminology, but I could so clearly see the dark 'curls' and 'waves' spreading from the equatorial belts out into the paler zones. There were occasionally-visible round dots in those zones, like other moon shadows. And just a general fine detail that astounded me. Is this what Jupiter will be like once it gets higher over the next few years? Can't wait.

[ONIKKINEN]

12 hours ago, Pixies said:

Seeing was good, often great. I've only been doing this for a couple of years and tonight was the best  view of Jupiter that I've had. The shadow/dot was sooo conspicuous, it almost looked 3-D.

I have a very limited sample size of times I've observed with a decent telescope but this was definitely the best seeing i have seen so far, maybe its all downhill from here... Wind had completely died down and i was at a remote-ish location with no real local ground thermals as i was looking over a field and a forest. At times Jupiter appeared to be frozen, almost like it was etched to the eyepiece, of course it got too bright very soon after but it was great for a while. The shadow itself looked almost fake with how well resolved it appeared, like a dead pixel but in my eye.

Jupiter was 16 degrees at highest this night, and the highest I've ever seen it, im excited to see how much of an improvement next year brings!

[Nik271]

GRS used to be much more red in the past, especially when it was discovered, hence the name. Nowadays it is brown-red,  rusty colour and has become paler. I agree that the rest of Jupiter in good seeing beats the GRS. 

[John]

Quite a few years back the GRS was rather grey visually, although larger than it is currently. It went through a phase for a few years where it's size reduced but the reddish / orange / rust tone seemed to deepen. Now it seems to be fading back to greyer again.

A few years back the south equatorial belt more or less disappeared altogether which left the GRS sort of "hanging" on it's own, which was odd.

It is these changes that make observing Jupiter so interesting IMHO. You never quite know what you will find when you observe it and things change over a matter of hours.

Saturn is very lovely but less dynamic observationally, apart from the moon positions.