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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The Transit of Io with shadow

30 November 2012

With a heads up from Chicago Astronomer Curt, several Chicago Astronomers were ready for this event, who were on-site at the Adler Planetarium for a Curiosity Mars Landing mission lecture...

Bringing along the C11 and C.A. Paulie his Dob...we were joined by others from the lecture...including C.A. John and Bill.

Before the lecture, we eyeballed a nice rising Moon over the lake. After the lecture, we set-up our equipment at our prime Chicago Astronomer site, with our eager fans mulling about...

The transit event was to occur at about 9:20 pm, so we had some time to set-up and share views of the Moon and Jupiter with our guests...

I also targeted Jupiter, giving our guests the opportunity to view the planet before I would take full control and monopolize the C11 for imaging through the main OTA...

Close to the event time, I set-up my camera to the C11 and started the process of documenting Io passing in front of Jupiter...

The weather was hazy and dewy...but C.A. Bill said that this was good for planets, as the atmosphere is more steady during these times. And in fact...Jupiter was razor sharp.

Io was readily observed off the limb of Jupiter and we observed it making contact...

Those with access to an eyepiece, enjoyed Io sliding past the limb and caught a nice sharp shadow it created on the planet. I could observe Io as it entered Jupiter's line of sight, but as the shadow took over...I could no longer see the satellite...lost in the band. In the above pic, the last two imaged of Jupiter were taken through the 90mm refractor...which clearly displayed the sharp shadow of Io.

Video of the Transit here:



Most of our guests left and we attended to several walk-ups with a total of 30 visitors for this event.

Chicago Astronomers John, Bill, Paulie and I stayed for a while, goofing around and having some nice laughs while we still followed the Io transit event...finally breaking down the site at 10:30pm.