Clear skies - 17/10/22

Ah pity, I wonder is it that the human eye is least sensitive to red light? It is faint, and therefore maybe just too hard to see sub magnitude 12.

Keith.

 

I know I have a cataract in my observing eye, Keith. 
But the experts say I'm nowhere near an operation yet. 
My non-observing eye is even worse. 
So it's no use using that one. 

I could see a 12.3 magnitude star very close to V382. 
So I would suggest the carbon star is fainter than that one. 

Clear skies from Aubrey. 

Hello everyone. 

All eyes in my back garden were on Jupiter last Monday night (17/10/22). 

Jupiter's distance from Earth was a little less than 602,000,000 kms. 

I had my William Optics 158mm f/7 apochromatic refractor set up. 
You see, 2 moons of Jupiter were going to be occulted by the giant planet.
I got this information from www.skyandtelescope.com   

The first, Europa (5.2 mag) disappeared behind at 22.28 Irish Summer Time (IST). 

Then later at 23.54 IST it was the turn of mag 5.0 Io. 

Europa took 3 minutes to be fully occulted. 

The larger moon Io took 5 minutes to be occulted. 

Only Callisto (mag 5. and Ganymede mag 4.5) were left on the eastern side of Jupiter at midnight. Brilliant!

3 field stars were visible near Jupiter: TYC 4663 49 (mag 9), TYC 4663 151 (mag 10.9) and TYC 4663 771 (mag 8.2). That 3rd star has a sp. class of K2. And it did sport a nice orange tinge. 

I observed other features with the -2.9 Jupiter. 
At 225x I could see that the NEB was a bit darker than the SEB. 
Also the North Polar and South Polar regions were observed at 225x. 
The 2 narrow belts the STB, and the SSTB,were visible too below the SEB.  

Could this whole event be my number 1 of 2022?
Maybe. But there is a certain Partial Solar Eclipse next Tuesday!

Valerie and another girl, who is a church worker, was with me. 
There was no wind and the temperature was 8 degrees C and getting colder. 

We also observed the beautiful double star Almach and M45 the Pleiades. 

There could be clear skies again on Thursday 20th October. 

Talk to you all soon!
Aubrey.  

Hi Aubrey, 

It was great to read your from Monday night as your vivid descriptions of the occultations help me to relive those wonderful few moments.

Like you, I also took in 'The Seven Sisters' - They looked beautiful at 42X. I waited a bit to have my first look at Mars this year. As it was low in the East, I had to contend with poor seeing, but I did pull out some of its albedo features. I'm looking forward to observing the Red planet over the next couple of months.

I tried to observe Neptune too, but I failed to locate it. Maybe next time. Before finishing up I noticed Auriga appearing over the roof tops...it's always nice welcoming old friends back...roll on winter observing!

Here's to many dark and clear nights.

Darren.

Hello Darren. 
It's always great to hear from you. 

Regarding Mars you might have a go at finding the red planet on the Sky and Telescope's website. 
Simply click on the (Astronomical) Tools and scroll down a short distance to Mars Profiler. 
Then put in your Universal Time. 
And away you go!

It was also super to have you on the phone yet again!

Clear skies from Aubrey. 

Hi Aubrey,  

Sorry for delay coming back to you, and thanks for suggesting the Sky and Telescope Mars resource...I must check it out.

Clear skies,

Darren.