Monday, November 15, 2010

Jupiter's Moons and our own

It was exceptionally clear, calm, and warm outside tonight, and my old computers weren't cooperating, so I decided to haul out the scope and see if I could find Jupiter and the moon. I was rewarded with a fine appearance of the ISS and when I turned to Jupiter about 7:00 I was rewarded with a smaller satellite crossing the FOV while I was focusing the ETX. Pretty cool. I found Jupiter after a quick and dirty alignment and experimented with my four filters. The yellow one worked best and at least one cloud band was clearly visible. Ganymede and Callisto were clearly visible but Io and Europa were aligned and very close to the planet's glare so I could only barely make them out. I was using my 10mm ep so things were fairly large. The 10mm and yellow filter seem to make a nice pair with the ETX and Jupiter. I had no problem keeping things in the FOV. I next turned to the moon and it was also nice at 35x and a yellow filter. Not so bright that it hurt and Bullialdus crater and it's companions A, B, and C were clearly visible along the terminator. Bullialdus A is only about 14 mi wide. Copernicus was also a fine sight. I couldn't find my portable map so had to use my laptop's Virtual Moon Atlas.
It may be time to reconsider deep sky stuff and start paying more attention to the moon. I thought I might be able to snag a walkup or two but no such luck. One guy came by as we were watching the ISS go over. Turns out he had worked on it at Houston so wasn't particularly impressed. Ho hum.

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