[Chaos-l] Little River last night

[matted]

I caught a nice shot of those storms last month.  I dont have fancy imaging
equipment, but the dark spots are obvious even in this image taken from
video (Stellcam 3 on my C8).  If you get steady skies at the right time it's
an easy and impressive target...

I've attached my image or it can be found in my flikr, here:
http://flic.kr/p/ay65dQ

-Matt






On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Robert Nielsen <robertnielsen at nc.rr.com>wrote:

> Nice report, Jon ... wish I could have been there!
>
> Concerning the dark spot on Jupiter, I've definitely seen the same spot ...
> and it isn't the GRS.  Check out APOD (
> http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html) today ... there is a great photo
> of Jupiter, with two of the new dark spots visible ...
>
> Robert
>
> On Oct 22, 2011, at 10:24 AM, Jon Stewart-Taylor <joncst at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all.  Little River last night was a very nice night, as it usually is
> at the park when the weather cooperates.    We had a small crowd, maybe 2
> dozen at the most, i think (Mickey?).  The Milky Way was prominent overhead,
> and stretched almost horizon to horizon, though without much detail.  The
> open-cluster tourist traps were very pretty, and the Ring and  Dumbell
> nebulae and M13 all performed to standards under the 5+ LM skies.
>  Surprisingly, i don't believe anybody  spent much time on M31.  I didn't
> even look at it, for two reasons.
> >
> > First, In the early part of the night, i was (overly ambitious!) trying
> to keep 4 instruments turned on the same object, starting with Mizar and
> Alcor.  The four were: 10x50 binoculars (on  tripod), Denali 15-45x zoom
> spotting scope (on tripod), Meade 60mm "Christmas trash"-type scope on
> alt-az mount, and 10" dob.  The idea was to show the differences in what you
> can see through the different types of instruments.  That worked to some
> extent, but one person really can't operate that many non-tracking
> instruments at once and still have time to chat.  Also, my telrad died early
> on.  First, the dewing was Ferocious, and i'd forgotten to bring the battery
> for the dew heater.  When i tried to wipe the glass, the lens fell in.  I
> tried just the 8x10 finder, but it was dewing also. The Denali proved too
> hard to find things in, especially after the dewing set in.  The binoculars
> were far enough away that most people didn't notice them, and i didn't have
> time to "advertise" them.  M
>  ostly i split time between the 60mm and the 10".
> >
> > Second, i eventually just spent the rest of the night on Jupiter (which
> was at least easy to find).  At the start of the night 3 Galilean moons were
> visible, but towards the end of the night the 4th emerged  from behind the
> planet, starting as just a bulge, then gradually clearing the planet and
> moving away.  Research after-the-fact showed:
> >   Friday 2011-10-21 9:04 PM Io Occultation End (S -32 J 106 27)
> > Despite an unsteady atmosphere the seeing was surprisingly good in
> "waves": so good i took the 10" up to 200x.  A little patience would give
> off-and-on clear glimpses of detail in the bands, and especially a dark spot
> at the western limb of the planet.  At first i thought it was a moon shadow,
> but the geometry didn't seem right.  Then i thought it might be the Great
> Pale (formerly Red) Spot, but it was in the wrong band.  At this point, i
> think it was just a dark spot in the band.
> >
> > I packed it in around 9:30, about 1/2 hour after the "official" end of
> the session.  Thanks to Little River and Morehead for hosting.
> >
> > J.
> > --
> > Jon Stewart-Taylor:  joncst at earthlink.net
> > Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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