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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Two shadows and one Transit of Jovian Moons

Chicago Astronomer Imaging session

12 November 2013

Tonight, shadows from IO and Europa will cast shadows on the surface of Jupiter and an actual transit of Io itself. Not a great rare event, but rare enough for Chicago Astronomers to bundle up and beat the cold down in order to image this dance of the Jovian system.

The action starts early in the day, but the main event will be when two shadows will appear on opposite limbs of the Jupiter disk and Io dead center of the planet. The main show starts at 9:08 pm and lasts for 6 minutes till 9:18 pm. Hopefully we can image this and share with our warm fans.

We will set-up scopes by the primary Chicago Astronomer site - just west of the Adler Building By the Northerly Island parking lot at 8:00 pm....and pack up by 9:30 pm promptly for warmth and maybe a warm drink. Can't miss us.



Check out Fellow Chicago Astronomer forum member's Curt, for his great timetables and diagrams of this evening's Jovian event....

www.curtrenz.com/jupiter.html

I'm using his data to time the transits.

If free, be there.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

No-go for the Jupiter Three event session....

We took a gamble..and came up short on observing the triple Jovian event this evening. At the time of the sequence event...Jupiter was just too close to the horizon and in the atmospheric muck...which presented a bubbling turbulent ball of mess to the Chicago Astronomers present.

Bill, Javier and myself set-up our gear in the awful bitter cold and gusty conditions. Temps were in the high 20's degrees...and with the wind chill...in the teens. The gusts at times were so strong as to make imaging nearly impossible, shaking our scopes.

Waiting for Jupiter to rise out of the muck, we slewed over to the Moon, which was allowing decent views for this session....

Using the C102mm Refractor, the whole lunar orb and low magnification imaged came out well, The C102 handles this job well and is a trusty little scope. The C11 was used for the higher mag images, but the winds shook the massive metal tube something awful. (Handling cold metal is never fun... )

Bill brought his binoviewers with 20mm eyepieces and used them on his refractor and I popped in mine on the C11 with 25mm eyepieces...providing us with 3-D views of the lunar surface...

We compared the two views and I thought that Bill's Refractor was more sharp, but mine handled the magnification.

Javier brought his Mak and took some decent shots of M42...but we all tried to observe the Jovian event...with limited success...

With near impossible conditions, this was the only suitable image I could push into a half-decent pic. One can see the Transit shadow of Europa along the western limb of the planet, but by this time, the event was just about over anyway.

We had two guests join us...

Sarai and Tony stopped by on this cold evening for the chance to view the Jovian event. I was disappointed that we were not able to share the Transits with them, but Sarai has become a hardcore Chicago Astronomer fan and will be joining us frequently.

Coolest!

At about 10:30pm...I had enough of the cold and we broke down our site and called it a less than satisfying event...but anytime behind the telescope is always a good one.

With the weekend warming up into the 50's...we may just decide to conduct a Chicago Astronomer Public Viewing Session.

Stay tuned for updates...

[patrickm]

I didn't get home from work until 10:30 and I certainly wasn't dressed for this.

You guys are nuts.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

It's for science....!

Pull up you little girl pants and come out and join the crew next time!