Cassiopeia Observatory - Report

Moon and Jupiter

Posted: 7 April 2014

2120 MST: viewed the Moon, 83X. Then viewed Jupiter, 83X and 222X. Three moons were visible off planet. Io was just about to start its transit of the planet; its shadow was already in transit. Ganymede, which was in transit across the planet, was intermittently visible as a bright "star-like" object.

Returned to the moon and did some brief viewing, 222X. Nice sights along the terminator, especially mountain shadows at edge of Mare Serenitatis.

The moon and Jupiter were showing a nice conjunction, as seen in this D7000 DSLR photo taken at 2131 MST, f/4.8, 1/200sec, ISO 400, 155mm, cropped:

I then did some iPhone 5s afocal 133X photography of the moon through the 8" LX200-ACF showing the northern terminator, including the Mare Serenitatis mountain shadows. This was taken at 2135 MST:

2140 MST: getting breezy. Did more iPhone lunar photography, this time at 267X. This was taken at 2141 MST, cropped from full-frame version:

I slewed the 8" telescope to Jupiter and began slo-mo (120 fps) video recordings of the planet at 267X with a moon filter. Seeing was not very good. Jupiter seemed underexposed so switched to one of the Variable Polarizing Filters, but Jupiter looked overexposed with only one of the filters. Added the second filter and did some more slo-mo video recordings. This is stack of 1114 frames taken at 2200 MST:

The shadow of Io is just visible near the central meridian just above the South Equatorial Belt.

2205 MST: viewed the beginning of the Io transit, 267X, but seeing was very bad.

2208 MST: viewed Mars, 267X, but seeing was too bad. Tried 222X. The North Polar Cap was barely visible, but no other surface details were visible.

2225 MST: viewed Jupiter, 222X. Ganymede transit had ended. Io shadow barely visible.

At 2232 MST, took this iPhone 5s photo showing the moon (overexposed), Jupiter, and the telescope:

2236 MST: took final looks at Jupiter, the moon, and then Mars, 83X. 2239 MST: viewed Saturn low in the southeast, 83X. Then ended session due to the poor seeing.

Comments are welcome using Email. If you are on Twitter you can use the button below to tweet this report to your followers. Thanks.