What did you see tonight?

[Chandra]

Luna 23-11-24. Apilado con AutoStakkert. Procesado con RegStax(1).tif

Last night astronomical observation was impossible, so I missed the transit of the GRS and Ganymede... Lots of clouds but no rain, today it takes the same path... I share two images from the night of Thursday to Friday.

[Mr Spock]

Well, I can see the moon - but there's a lot of high cloud and the forecast isn't good. Maybe it's a tv night 

[shropshire lad]

Well just watched the ISS pass between the Moon and Jupiter, very special moment.

 

[Ratlet]

4 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Let's hope it stays clear and seeing improves. 

-1.3° last night. I'd rather not see that again!

I think observing in the UK has one of those 'fast, cheap or good, you can only have 2' triangles. 

Maybe: clear, warm or seeing, you can only have 2.

[LongJohn54]

After so many cloudy nights I wasn't going to let last night get away.  With an almost full Moon and Jupiter close by the choice of what to look at was pretty obvious.  I would sit at the eyepiece for about 20 minutes at a time then go into the warm room for a heat and to type up some notes.

The transit of Ganymede was a real highlight.  Not seeing the Red Spot was disappointing.   Heres my raw notes of the transit attached.

 

[Froeng]

I am looking at Jupiter again tonight. There is some high haze and nigh clouds coming through slowly. The seeing is very good! I tweaked the C8's collimation further until I got a nice bullseye at 500x focus. Unfortunately the GRS is not visible. The two equatorial bands are contrasty with some swirling in one of them (sorry I can never figure out which way is up!).

Taking a break and I may get my sketchbook out a bit later... 

[Stu]

5 minutes ago, LongJohn54 said:

After so many cloudy nights I wasn't going to let last night get away.  With an almost full Moon and Jupiter close by the choice of what to look at was pretty obvious.  I would sit at the eyepiece for about 20 minutes at a time then go into the warm room for a heat and to type up some notes.

The transit of Ganymede was a real highlight.  Not seeing the Red Spot was disappointing.   Heres my raw notes of the transit attached.

 

It was great to watch, wasn’t it?

I think your timings on GRS are off a little; it wasn’t fully on the disk until about 1am and transmitted at 2.37am, along with Ganymede’s shadow. That would have been good to see 👍

[LongJohn54]

@Stu Yes, it was great to see. I followed Ganymede all the way across, never losing sight of it.  I missed the shadow transit.  I was getting pretty cold and there was some light high cloud approaching so I packed up soon after.   There will be other and hopefully better chances to see it again.

[LongJohn54]

I've been getting Aurora alerts for the last 3 hours.  With the almost full moon up I doubt it'll be visible here but there's no harm in trying.

[John]

14 minutes ago, LongJohn54 said:

I've been getting Aurora alerts for the last 3 hours.  With the almost full moon up I doubt it'll be visible here but there's no harm in trying.

Quite thick cloud here as well as a bright moon so no real chance of aurora sightings I suspect.

If the cloud thins a bit I might take a look at Jupiter later. Apart from that plus the moon, nothing else showing through the murk currently.

Edited November 25, 2023 by John

[Telescope40]

Setup my Tak about 4.30. Thin high cloud about but some good breaks. Plan was to catch the ISS hopefully with my scope and then follow up with a few observations. 

ISS - great. Really chuffed. 15mm plossl in use and I was able to track very well. Seeing the shape of the station very well.  Note to self - increase tripod height next time you idiot !!  

Any follow up however, after filling my face, is a no go. The high cloud has increased. Can still see the Moon and Jupiter but just not worth persevering with. 

Love this hobby we all have. Best of luck to the rest of you guys and gals.  👍🤣😡 

John 

[Mr Spock]

Satellite image isn't looking so good for tonight 

[PeterStudz]

Just setting up with a view to looking at Jupiter after dinner. There’s hazy cloud around so don’t know if it’ll be clear later on. Nice halo around the moon & Jupiter! iPhone shot.

[IB20]

I think tonight with my conditions and a few too many at the football, II will live vicariously through other reports. Good luck all!

[Nigella Bryant]

Clouded out here tonight, probably for the best I've 1tb of data to work through, lol. Mostly from Jupiter, some Uranus and a couple of imaging of the moon. I've still a few days in November of solar to process, that's probably another 500gb. 

[Froeng]

2 hours ago, LongJohn54 said:

light high cloud approaching so I packed up soon after.   There will be other and hopefully better chance

I was lucky! The high clouds started to cover almost the entire sky when I came back out after dinner!

Jupiter was rock-steady and about 40deg high at 7.30pm. I quickly started sketching and I could see Jupiter's brightness fading away while I was drawing. By the time I had finished, hardly any detail was visible as the disk was now too dim!

Anyway, I just about made this:

Now everything is inside drying off, although it was noticeably less humid outside than most nights...

[Nigella Bryant]

Well, not what I've seen tonight, forgive me but over this last year. Just did a collage of some image's, Mars (last year), Jupiter from October (this year), and Uranus, this month (November)

[Froeng]

18 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Well, not what I've seen tonight, forgive me but over this last year. Just did a collage of some image's, Mars (last year), Jupiter from October (this year), and Uranus, this month (November)

These are really nice! And what amazed me is I just saw that little white oval in one of Jupiter’s belts you captured with the camera! I wasn’t sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me! Thanks for posting these.

The shot of Uranus is particularly cool (literally!).

Edited November 25, 2023 by Froeng

[Nigella Bryant]

5 minutes ago, Froeng said:

These are really nice! And what amazed me is I just saw that little white oval in one of Jupiter’s belts you captured with the camera! I wasn’t sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me! Thanks for posting these.

The shot of Uranus is particularly amazing.

Thanks Froeng, yes, that white oval is going strong and I imaged it again last night (yet to process). It's an interesting feature. There was also a quite visible knot in the SEB. I need to process and compare that feature with the October image. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by Nigella Bryant

[mikeDnight]

41 minutes ago, Froeng said:

I was lucky! The high clouds started to cover almost the entire sky when I came back out after dinner!

Jupiter was rock-steady and about 40deg high at 7.30pm. I quickly started sketching and I could see Jupiter's brightness fading away while I was drawing. By the time I had finished, hardly any detail was visible as the disk was now too dim!

Anyway, I just about made this:

Now everything is inside drying off, although it was noticeably less humid outside than most nights...

Hope you don't mind me suggesting that 335X it too high a magnification for visual observation of Jupiter, and that's the reason you saw "hardly any detail".  Even the expert planetary observer Edward Emerson Barnard found that 180X is around the ideal power for Jupiter, even through the great Yekes refractor. Some planets such as Mars, Mercury and Venus may benefit from 300X  plus on occasion as they display mainly albedo features, but Jupiter is swaithed in intricate fine detail requiring high definition. Perhaps on a night with first class seeing you could push the magnification of Jupiter upto 250X, but it would be pushing things IMHO.

[Froeng]

16 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Hope you don't mind me suggesting that 335X it too high a magnification for visual observation of Jupiter, and that's the reason you saw "hardly any detail".  Even the expert planetary observer Edward Emerson Barnard found that 180X is around the ideal power for Jupiter, even through the great Yekes refractor. Some planets such as Mars, Mercury and Venus may benefit from 300X  plus on occasion as they display mainly albedo features, but Jupiter is swaithed in intricate fine detail requiring high definition. Perhaps on a night with first class seeing you could push the magnification of Jupiter upto 250X, but it would be pushing things IMHO.

Hi Mike, don't mind at all. Typically I start with low magnifications and then see how far I can push it before the image looses contrast. I was getting a nice crisp view at 335x tonight, but the seeing seemed very steady indeed. Normally I would go to either 135x or 225x (I have pairs of 15mm and 9mm LVs). Although now you say it, I may need to start looking out for a pair of 12mm LVs 😁.

The fact I was not able to see much detail towards the end of my sketching session (which only lasted 10mins), was the clouds that kept thickening. At the beginning, there was quite a bit of cloud detail on show, but 10mins later the planet had almost "faded away" and with it its details...

[globular]

37 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Even the expert planetary observer Edward Emerson Barnard found that 180X is around the ideal power for Jupiter

I've had some lovely views of Jupiter at high power (350x-450x) - when conditions are right its lovely to see a huge image.
However for picking out details I find dropping the magnification to 150x-200x shows more of what's on offer.

My observation notes from a session back in 2021....
"tried ES92/12 with 2x powermate (354x). amazingly stable. lots of band detail. bet there is more to be had at lower power, but still very nice, especially the size! swapped the ES92 for N22T4 still in powermate (195x) wow! the detail! io, europa, ganymede and callisto on show too. stunning!"

 

[John]

I've just popped out with my 100mm refractor because I noticed that a patch of clearer sky had appeared with Jupiter and the moon in the middle of it. I got some very nice views of Jupiter with the GRS just past mid-transit. The NEB is showing lots of interesting details currently. In particular there is what looks to be a noticeable pale "bay" on the southern edge of the NEB to the NW of the GRS's position. Both the NEB and the SEB seem to have twists or knots in them and variations in the darker colouration. Far from the plain bands that sometimes show. The GRS seems a stronger salmon-pink tone that last time I saw it as well. 150x - 180x seems to be delivering the strongest contrast variations in the jovian features this evening.

Glad I bothered to get out 🙂  

Edited November 25, 2023 by John

[John]

Another thing very noticeable tonight is the apparent size difference in the eyepiece between Ganymede and Europa. These two are on the same side of Jupiter tonight and not too far apart. The physical size difference between them (illustrated below) is clear from the eyepiece view. Their apparent diameters (according to Stellarium) are 1.78 arc seconds for Ganymede and 1.06 arc seconds for Europa. 

[Ags]

1 hour ago, John said:

Both the NEB and the SEB seem to have twists or knots in them and variations in the darker colouration. Far from the plain bands that sometimes show. The GRS seems a stronger salmon-pink tone that last time I saw it as well. 150x - 180x seems to be delivering the strongest contrast variations in the jovian features this evening.

I could see the knots and twists clearly tonight but for me the GRS was elusive. Earlier tonight it was well-placed but I could not detect it. I tried just now and could see the empty space where it should be, near the sunset limb of jupiter, but I could not see any red tones.