Moon and Jupiter, 08/04

[The Warthog]

It was about 1 degree out tonight, but the moon was bright, and when I started about 9:00, there was considerable high clouds that looked like ice clouds, and gave a halo to the moon. The first thing I did was a polar alignment, and while I was doing that, the alarm on my watch went off, reminding me to look for the Iridium flare that appeared in the north at -6. It is another new one to me, bringing my list to 40 of the existing 78 satellites.

Since everything else was washed out, I put the scope on the moon, and spent a while looking at the detail, which seemed unusual in its clarity tonight. With the 16mm ep, the disk just fit in the fov, and after gawking for a while, I put in the 8mm ep, and watched the sun rise over the cluster of craters that includes Bayer, Schiller, and Rost. Did that for quite a long time, but went in after a bit because the clouds looked like they were going to take over. I went and watched the end of a cop show, and the beginning of the news.

When I went back outside, the clouds had completely departed, and the sky looked pretty good. I moved the scope over to the moon again, and just checked out how the sun had been rising over a crater where I had seen the top of a peak separate from the curving eastern wall earlier, the peak was now part of the western rim.

I put the scope on Jupiter next, and realized that I was getting unusually good seeing, as I could clearly see the bands and zones on the disk, although not well enough to see if the GRS was there. I thought I might have seen the GRS a couple of times, but I'm not sure, and I havent' checked to see if the GRS was visible, anyway. I put the apodizing mask on, which improved the view marginally, and also a yellow filter, with slight improvement. Tried different combos of eyepieces, barlows and filters for a while, and noticed Ganymede at the upper right of Jupiter. As I wasn't sure which way it was going, I hung around to see if I might be about to see either an occultation of the moon by Jupiter, or a shadow transit, but eventually checked with my PDA to find that Ganymede is moving away from the planet, so there's no chance of either at the moment. A breeze had sprung up, but the night was still wonderfully clear, so I put away my eyepieces carefully and brought them inside, but just covered the scope and left it out, deciding to have faith in Environment Canada's forecast of 0% chance of rain for the night.

[Naz]

Enjoyed yourself WH, good report, and you do a lot of good work with modest equipment, and that gives inspiration to the rest of us.

naz

[lunator]

WH

Good report.

Watching the terminatior 'move' is alawys interesting.

Cheers

Ian

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Nice report WH. Something else that I didn't know - that you can see the terminator move. Wow, never even thought of looking for that. That could be a webcam project to do timelapse on it and then speed it up.

I also need to sort out a lok at Jupiter, the best that I have managed so far is looking out of the bedroom window with binoculars. I could see that it is not a star, but very little detail was available.

Enjoyed the read, thanks mate.

Captain Chaos

[OXO]

A good read Wh thanks for sharing your report

[lunator]

Nice report WH. Something else that I didn't know - that you can see the terminator move. Wow, never even thought of looking for that. That could be a webcam project to do timelapse on it and then speed it up.

I also need to sort out a lok at Jupiter, the best that I have managed so far is looking out of the bedroom window with binoculars. I could see that it is not a star, but very little detail was available.

Enjoyed the read, thanks mate.

Captain Chaos

CC

A time lapse project is an excellent idea.

I 'discosvered' that it was relatively easy to see the terminator change when I took some photo images of the Moon about 3 hours apart during an observing session. The change in the postion of the terminator was noticable.

I hope you get a chance to do this.

Cheers

Ian

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Sounds like a "set up and leave it for two hours" kind of job. Then go out again to find that it's all full of water :x

I might have a go at some really close shots when I have the EP projection sorted for the webcam, that way the movement should be obvious over a relatively short time, say an hour?

Might need to get another mount so that I can look at something else while its cooking.

Captain Chaos