starting to tease out the detail in Jupiter

[AlexM]

I'd nearly given up on last night when I went out for a last look at 1am gmt and discovered the clouds had cleared to the South. Seeing was 'ok' - the moon was clearly 'under water' at 240x. Turning to Jupiter I realised I could easily see the NEB at 37.5X - most encouraging. Bumping the mag up to 240x in the 5mm hyperion, the reddish brown NEB was showing good evidence of festoons and there was a dark line underneath it(perhaps the Northern temperate belt?) before the polar shading started. The shading around both poles showed hints of being 'mottled' at points. No sign this time of a trace of the SEB and presumably the wrong time for the GRS. The eyepiece captured the 4 main moons beautifully, and the orb of Jupiter was obviously flattened. I can't believe how large the planet looked in the lens. I turned in about 2.15 feeling satisfied!

[Peter Reader]

Excellent stuff, I hope to be able to get that kind of detail at some point!

[callisto]

You will, just keep at it

Mark.

[Peter Reader]

Skies here are clear tonight after the rain, will try and see Jupiter in detail tonight at higher magnification.

[bluegrassgazer]

AlexM,

I was observing Jupiter tonight. Seeing was pretty good tonight and I did see the line you think might be the northern temperate belt. I can't tell you if that is what you saw, but I saw it too. It was very dark and very thin, but parallel to the northern equatorial belt. I described it to my wife as a line created by a ball point pen that was running out of ink . It had gaps in parts of the line but was very distinct.

I've been observing Jupiter for several years off and on, and I can tell you I've never seen anything quite like it.

[griff44]

I had good views of Jupiter last night, could work out the orange bands with my 200p dob but the light from the planet does dazzle my eyes - are any of you using a filter to see Jupiter in more detail with your ep?

[AlexM]

AlexM,

I was observing Jupiter tonight. Seeing was pretty good tonight and I did see the line you think might be the northern temperate belt. I can't tell you if that is what you saw, but I saw it too. It was very dark and very thin, but parallel to the northern equatorial belt. I described it to my wife as a line created by a ball point pen that was running out of ink .

Your description of a biro running out of ink is a great way of describing what I saw. It came and went with the seeing and is in about the right place. I've only been observing for about a year now and I'm really finding that observing detail is slowly improving with practice.

[spaceboy]

I had good views of Jupiter last night, could work out the orange bands with my 200p dob but the light from the planet does dazzle my eyes - are any of you using a filter to see Jupiter in more detail with your ep?

80A is a good filter for Jupiter and is recommended to view the GRS.

You should get plenty detail from your 200p Peter. The atmosphere plays a big part as even if it's a clear night there may be turbulence 40000 ft up.

This was taken through my 200 personally I've found viewing Jupiter better with my 200 over my 250 but I found the view of Uranus better with the 250 over the 200 but that again may have been due to upper atmosphere.

[Stealth]

Well I cant seem to get Jupiter larger than 4-5mm in size in any eyepiece, i've tried using my 24mm through 8mm zoom eyepiece, even with a 3x barlow (which seems pretty useless) How can i get Jupiter to appear bigger ?

BTW this is using my 300P DOB.

[AlexM]

Well I cant seem to get Jupiter larger than 4-5mm in size in any eyepiece, i've tried using my 24mm through 8mm zoom eyepiece, even with a 3x barlow (which seems pretty useless) How can i get Jupiter to appear bigger ?

BTW this is using my 300P DOB.

I use a 5mm hyperion in a fl 1200mm 250 dob after some fairly rigorous collimation. This gives me 240x mag I think. I find that at 200x plus mag I can get decent views if the seeing is good and I concentrate.

[Peter Drew]

STEALTH. You are seeing Jupiter larger than you think. Jupiter is getting towards 1 minute of arc in diameter, the Moon is 30 minutes of arc so with a mag of say 50x Jupiter will appear larger than the Moon as seen with the naked eye!

[Talitha]

... Jupiter will appear larger than the Moon as seen with the naked eye!

Sorry Peter, but that particular phrase really made me giggle.. it reads like one of those sensationalistic emails that gets passed around for eons.

(... we now return you to your regularly scheduled program )