Good evening All,
I hope you and your family are keeping well.
Last Monday (15 January 2024), the skies were clear. So, I decided I do a spot of observing from my front garden. As the garden faces south, Jupiter was well positioned high in the sky. Ahead of setting-up, I checked which of the Jovian Moons would be on show. To my suprise the 'Sky and Telescope' website that provides the information showed that Io and Europa would be blocked by Jupiter at the exact same time...What is more, the Great Red Spot (GRS) would be on show! I figured this must a rare, so I decided I would sketch the event.
Armed with a 2B pencil and some sketching paper I was in position with my f/5 250mm Newtonian Reflector on a Dobsonian Base one hour ahead of the event. I was keen to make several sketches - one before, one during, and one after the occultations. So, at 18:04 UT I made my first sketch. Seeing was not great, so there was little detail observed. That being said, The NEB and SEB were visible, as were the STB and SSTB at 139X. In addition, there were two field stars in the 0.48 ° FOV: TYC 634-519-1, and HIP 10472.
The second observation started at 19:06 UT - four minutes before the occultation. By this stage, Io was paritialy blocked. The GRS was visible, but appeared somewhat flatter than an hour ago. Also, I observed and recorded a festoon on Jupiter. So, the seeing had improved for sure as part of the NTB and NNTB were visible. By 19:15 UT Io and Europa had gone behind Jupiter - it was a real thrill to whatch them 'disappear'!
Knowing that Eurpoa would exit occultation of Juipter at 21:40UT I went back out to make my final observation and sketch of the evening. The final and third sketch was taken at 21:44 UT. And this was without doubt one of best views of Jupiter I have seen - so many details were visible. For example, the NNTB was much darker in places, and it was a similar story with the SEB. What is more, I could even see a couple of white ovals...incredible stuff.
Taken together, it was a brillinat observing session and I expect it to feature on my list of top observations for 2024.
Many thanks for reading and taking a look.
Clear skies,
Darren.
