Observing Report: Jupiter detail easy, even from horrible observing location

I decided to try and observe this morning about the only thing that I can observe from my new location, Jupiter. To say that my new apartment is less than ideal is putting it politely. I have a street light literally 10 ft from my door, a very large tree 8 ft from my door, and my only view to the south that isn't blocked by the branches of the trees is mostly blocked by the roof of my landlords house. That being the case, I grabbed the 6" Dob and decided to test the waters anyway.

I was thrilled by what I saw once the scope reached thermal equilibrium with the early morning air. I don't recall ever having seen more detail, although I did have a good night in August of last year with my 8" SCT on what was obviously a very steady night. That being said, I still find Jupiter to be the most challenging object to tease detail from, may be me, my equipment, who knows, but its still rewarding to view. I was also surprised to notice a distinct brightness level of Ganymede over the other moons. I've never noticed that before. Now I'm not an avid Jupiter observer (not yet, this little 6" f8 may change that) so I can't rattle off the belts and zones that I observed but I could clearly see in times of steady air distinct details in the belts, and at times hints of protrusions of those belts into zones (festoon?). One belt seemed as if it had a parallel separation within it, or perhaps I was glimpsing two very close darker belts. I could also for the first time see a darkening of a thick zone (belt?) above the normal 2 main belts I normally see, in addition to a very thin but noticeable belt below the 2 main belts as well.

I tried a number 80A blue filter, and although it did darken the belts some, I simply found it more aesthetically pleasing to view with out the filter. I used a 9.7mm PL and a 6mm Or, keeping primarily with the 9.7 since it seemed to provide the best amount of detail and contrast. The 6mm surprised me in the sharp image it still provided, but contrast was lower and the "floaters" distracted me at times. Also for the first time I saw diffraction spikes when viewing a planet, they were think and clearly visible, but not too much of an annoyance.

All and all I'm please to at least have a spot outside my door that I can see the elliptic, so Jupiter and the Moon are two targets that I'll be vistiting more often from this less than ideal setup. Gotta make the best of it, and this morning was a pleasant surprise.

My personal spin on outreach, and why its important to me.

When I'm doing outreach, its as if I'm "paying it forward". I recall my 9th grade Earth Sciences teacher. He took a group of students, with the assistance of some personal friends of his, up to the hills of western Maryland to show us Halley's Comet. He wasn't being paid as a teacher that night, but in a way he has continued to be my teacher from that night forward and every moment I'm at the eyepiece, and for that gift of knowledge, I am forever in his debt. 

Its that feeling that I must pass this gift on others that continues to pull me to do whatever outreach I can. I don't recall his name, but every night that I am under stars, every magazine and book I read from cover to cover, pays tribute to that gift, the gift of knowledge and perhaps more importantly, the continued thirst for knowledge that that single evening in western Maryland sparked in a young persons life. I hope that I can share that gift with others, if only one, my job would be done.

For Tweet sake people, Twitter has so much potential to the astronomy community!

This is going to be a response I'm putting on the CloudyNights Astronomy forums website. Please click the link if you wish to view the whole thread. http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/3120133/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1

I'm very surprised that any means of
outreach isn't utilized by my fellow stargazers. Equally surprising
is the preconceptions that exist, which vary from mild uncertainty to
complete disregard towards Twitter. Twitter is simply a method for
exchanging information, how its currently utilized is one thing, but
its up to the creativity of a community to really leverage its
capabilities. It will NEVER be a replacement for a forum, its purpose
is not for the exchange of detailed information, but rather quick
exchanges meant to garner further interest in either the subject
matter or the one posting it themselves.

Twitter gathers user inputed
information, very true. And yes, you need to follow someone to see
just their posts, or else you would see everyones. Thats a mess, so
one way to organize and filter info is to use something called
hashtags (basically key words) and a program that helps you organize
your Twitter info, such as TweetDeck, can permit you organize, filter
and thus benefit from the flow of information. So what does that mean
to astronomers and CloudyNights users?

Lets say you have Tweetdeck, and you
configure it to follow everything that has the word Astronomy in it.
Now you will have a column that will show you every tweet with
astronomy. Too generic? Ok, how about astronomy & celestron, or
astronomy & telescope, or astronomy & messier OR NGC, you get
the picture. Twitter could actually complement CN and drive more
traffic to it. How so? You just put up a new review on CN, Tweet
that you did and now the WORLD literally knows you put up a review on
CN. Now if I had twitter running, and perhaps follow a keyword of #cn
or #cloudynights or whatever, I now see that you posted a review.
Maybe I wasn't going on CN tonight since I have a game to attend, but
now that I see there is something that I'm was really anxious to read
about, I'll take the time and go and not wait until Saturday. Dell by
the way drove $3 million dollars of sales there way via twitter.

You just posted a Celestron 8" SCT
on CN's classifieds. Many many many folks review this nightly/daily
or via email. If you tweeted this, that you have a Celestron SCT on
CN classifieds and had the link embedded in the tweet, and I happen
to be monitoring #celestron or/and #forsale or #cloudynights (I hope
you get the picture of what keywords do), I have that update in REAL
TIME. I can not hop on to CN, and let you know I'm interested,
literally 1 minute after you post, thus driving more targeted traffic
to your ad. Do you see what the difference is? Sure you can subscribe
to the Forum and get email updates, but lets say your not interested
in Meades, so your mailbox would fill up with any SCT or classified
that was posted. Twitter and TweetDeck permit more granular
filtering, and again in real time, even email has delivery latency
and delays.

You just bought the 12” Sky-Watcher
Dob, and its clear out. Your out with you scope and laptop, wireless
internet running from your AP in the house. You could observe the
objects, a few here and there, pack it up, go in and type up your
review for CN. OR you could tweet what your viewing right then and
there for the world to see and follow, giving a brief impression of
how the scope is performing on that particular object. Kind of like a
virtual public star party? Now someone tweets ya back, “Hey, hows
it on splitting the Double-Double”. So you move to Lyra, enter in
the Double-Double and post a quick reply with your impressions. Are
you seeing the point here? Am I saying stay by yourself, never go to
a public star party only use Twitter? Of course not, I hope you see
its potential however for outreach and social interaction when it may
not be possible or convenient to do it in the real world. Now the
following morning you STILL put your review on CN, because frankly
this is where you can REALLY give details. Its just cool to know
that someone is actually AT THE EYEPIECE right now and viewing the
object, its also interesting to get an idea of how that object looks
visually with the scope they are using. Maybe “M4 isn't that
rewarding with a 6” dob, but wow, M5 looks wonderful”. This
exchange is one that I personally would love to see more astronomy
folks do.

Thats just scratching the surface.
Twitter may fade a way, who knows. CN will always be here (well we
hope so!). But for now, the two can coexist and actually complement
each other, if you think creatively and without bias. I'm frankly
very surprised that Cloudynights/Astronomics doesn't already have a
presence on Twitter, maybe the misconceptions of competing
technologies rather then complementing technologies run that deep.

My 2 cents. And yes, I really enjoy
Twitter AND CloudyNights.

Is Pluto A Planet? A Historical Journey through the Solar System By David A Weintraub

When I picked up this book in early May, I expected to learn more about Pluto and its planetary status debate. What I received was an excellent historical review of solar system discoveries from their beginning to today. The author, which has taught solar system history at Vanderbilt University for the last 14 years, seems to bring us right into the classroom. He has done an outstanding job of educating the reader in the challenges that have faced mankind ever since we turned the scopes to the night sky and discovered objects closer to us then the stars. I was fascinated by every concept of solar system science and its discoveries pouring from the pages. Equally appealing to the technology employed to make those discoveries, was the uniqueness of each of the discovers and how their individual contributions to astronomy has helped further our understanding of our solar system.

The book starts with how the earliest observers viewed solar system bodies and brings us all the way to our present day understanding of the solar system. I learned that the debate of planetary status is not new to Pluto, but has been back and forth for most solar system object discovies. I learned so much more, and most of all it was a fun and educating read. If your into astronomy, this is a must have book to add to your bookself. If your simply interested in Pluto, and specifically the debate between the two factions, well, your better off looking elsewhere. This book is for those interested in learning the history of solar system bodies; planets, asteriods, KBO, TNO, etc. You will walk away knowing the minds of astronomers at the dawn of the science, the challenges that face planetary scientist through the 20th century, and how 21st century technology has forced astronomers to yet again examine their own clasification methods and develop a non-perfect but as close as we can get way of clasifying solar system objects.

Observing report August 6th - Jupiter

My son wanted to see the moon, so I took the scope out for what I thought would be a quick peek with him, but what soon turned into a few hours for me.

After I should him the moon and a brief look at Jupiter and putting him down for bed, the weather got a bit cloudier and I went back inside for awhile. Came back our at about 1:30am. Went in and out for the next couple of hours, as I waited for the seeing to get better between the views.

I saw what looked like 5 moons of Jupiter, but can't confirm if the 5th was a moon or star that happened to be in line with planet. Io, Ganyemede, Callisto, and Europa are all normally visible, but the 5th extended past Callisto last night by some distance.

I saw a blue oval in the NEB (North Equatorial Belt) during better seeing, and then a festoon extended from the NEB to the NTrB (North Tropical Belt), which both were firsts for me to see them with such clarity. I was using the 6" newt last night. The GRS (Great Red Spot) is certainly not red anymore, very very pale, but huge and easy to see as it came from the limb of the planet. Its very cool to see the features move over the course of a couple of hours. The impact scar was not transiting, so I didn't see it, but even without that, Jupiter has some awesome features to track. Looking forward to my next dark sky trip.

Very informative site on the belts and zones on Jupiter, and how to recognize them.
http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/jupiter_obs.htm
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