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ELO Special Event - Jupiter's triple shadow transit

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:42 am
by merle
I have been watching the forecast the past few days and have come to the conclusion it will either be cloudy or not. The National Weather Service still shows 70 percent cloud cover, however the Clear Sky Chart shows clear skies during the hours of the transits.

There will be MAS members at the Eagle Lake Observatory to view the event if the clouds clear out. At this point I think there is a greater chance of clouds, but since the next triple transit is more than 17 years away, I'm hoping for clear enough skies to see this one.


Merle
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Re: ELO Special Event - Jupiter's triple shadow transit

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:42 pm
by RCSARVER
I expect to be at ELO to night, 30% chance of clear sky, worth the trip!

Roy

Re: ELO Special Event - Jupiter's triple shadow transit

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 2:57 pm
by Enberg
At 5 minutes until 3pm, both the csc and the NWS forecast are improved over what Merle showed here. I will be heading out to ELO after work. The forecasts still disagree, CSC looks kinda ok.

Re: ELO Special Event - Jupiter's triple shadow transit

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2015 2:44 am
by Steve Baranski
Thanks to everyone who made this event happen! It was a great showing for a great show! Wonderful to get out under the stars again, with all the great folks @ MAS.

Thanks!

Steve

Re: ELO Special Event - Jupiter's triple shadow transit

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2015 5:24 am
by merle
I'll echo Steve's comments, it was great to get out and see some stars. Having the weather cooperate on a night of such a rare astronomical event is almost as rare as, well, a triple shadow transit on Jupiter. We had a FANTASTIC night at Eagle Lake. While the seeing could have been better, just the fact that we had clear skies in January and it wasn't 20 below was a huge win. From beginning to end we had clear skies, the clouds appeared about 1:15 am, after I took my last images and most everyone had left.

In addition to the shadow transit, we had great vies of comet Lovejoy. Both visually and with the StellaCam. I missed it, but I heard there was an impressive view of the "Earthshine" side of the moon too. But the star of the evening was clearly Jupiter. Other than viewing the three shadows at once, maybe the highlight was the merging of Io's and Callisto's shadows. It stated as an elongated shadow as they approached each other, then produced a very dark and crisp shadow as the two came together.

We had a great turnout, I estimated 80 members and guests. Thank you to everyone for attending and making it a great event, especially those who manned the telescopes, shoveled the snow and brought snacks.

Below is the one and only "good" image I was able to get of the triple transit. It's quite fuzzy, but you can clearly make out the shadows. A little less obvious is Io itself, but the little light spot is in the right location compared to the Starry Night screen shot. Images taken with a Canon 50d at prime focus using a 5x Televue Powermate on the 8" TMB. This image was taken at 12:49 am with Io's shadow just 4 minutes from leaving Jupiter's disk.

Thanks again everyone!! 2015 is off to a great start.

Merle
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Re: ELO Special Event - Jupiter's triple shadow transit

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2015 10:29 am
by Lilah
Last night was great everyone! Thanks to everyone who made it happen. It was great seeing everyone and getting to meet some members I haven't met yet.