I love the sessions where the GRS is actually kinda obvious. Maybe in part because it's clarity is tied to the kind of observer planetary drawing has made me. I got up at 3 the following morning cause Io was not only casting a shadow but the moon itself was against a darker band, I was hoping I could pick it out. Saw the shadow, sadly not the moon.

Oh man was Jupiter great last night. I've seen as much detail on occasions but never more. There was a clear shadow being cast, I looked it up, it was from Europa. When I was all done I took one last look before breaking everything down and saw that the one moon not previously visible was emerging from behind the planet. I thought I was seeing the shadow of one moon and another coming around from behind. Turns out though that it was Europa in front of Jupiter, so though I was seeing great planetary detail I did not notice a tiny white ball in there. I almost decided to draw it again really fast - it be cool to capture the planet, a moon looking like an emerging pimple and a shadow ... but the cold was getting to me!!

11/28 - what a great night to have the scope out! First, Jupiter was really close to the full Moon. With a 40mm eyepiece (36X) I was able to see a portion of the Moon on one side and Jupiter and it's moons on the other side, very nice. Then I zeroed in on the planet for a sketch and caught a moon just coming out from behind. They don't want that sort of thing when you submit images, but sometimes you need to do what's fun.

I posted this on facebook as I often do, but with a nice and unexpected twist. 6 people liked it ... among them Wayne Jaeschke!

Hey all,

In the last couple of months I was only been able to image Jupiter twice, so here are some of my results:

August 13, 2012.

Conditions were fairly good (I still don't know exactly how some people rate seeing conditions on the scale of 1-10... ), but if I had to guess, it was maybe 7? Some details are visible, there is even blue regions present  in the equatorial zone. South is up, since GRS is in the South Equatorial Belt.

 Now, here is image from October 23, 2012

Unfortunately, it does not look much more detailed, although it should given few reasons:
1. It is higher up in the sky, so there is less atmosphere
2. It is closer to us and therefore it's angular diameter is bigger and it is brighter.

There are couple reasons why the image is not superior: conditions got bad really fast at by the time I ended shooting Blue channel, there was so much haze that visually I could only see no more than 5 stars in the sky. My histogram brightness fell drastically from the moment I started on Red channel. Another problem is that I only recorded at 15 fps, since I wanted to make shutter speed slower than 1/30 sec., from last time I knew the camera was making small distortions event at 30 fps.. but the next slowest rate was 15 fps, not 27 fps which I thought would be possible. Bad judgment and brain cramp on my part.

Btw, the black blurry dot on the surface of the planet is a shadow of the moon Io that was making a pass across the planet.

So, generally there is ton of things to improve on, and with the new camera coming in soon, there ability to shoot at 60 fps will be possible, so in theory we will have much crisper images coming in soon.


Vlad.

First GRS transit of this Jupiter season!

Just timing I guess, I never seem to catch the GRS. I'd done 6 drawing since my first in August, though the general condition of the bands seemed to change I was seeing similar features every time, like I was always catching the same side.

Not so this morning though. There was awesome drama in the bands, and though it looked more like the Jupiter Great Red smudge than spot, it was still real obvious and seemed to be about at the transit point. It seemed like more was going on in the southern pole too. Nice start to the day.

Early AM Jupiter watch

Another beautiful morning for Jupiter, I thought some of the features around the middle were really exceptional. The big guy has looked great every time so far this season, but thought that northern band has been more complex than earlier this year I thought this was extraordinary. Early mornings have been set aside for musical arrangement lately, it was real nice to be able to get back out to the scope.

Ahhhh, its like the return of an old friend whose been gone way too long. I miss drawing Jupiter so much that I beat back the desire to lie in bed when my eyes opened a few minutes before 5:00 this morning. The planet looks better than ever, I saw more bands than previously in the year the turbulence within the larger bands was big as life. What seemed really neat was the band that in this drawing is just below the equator seemed to make a weird dip, it bends down on the right side of the image. That was intentional, not just sloppy drawing! 

I can't believe it took me so long to get around to drawing planets! Wish I started doing this 15 years ago. Thanks again to Bill for turning me onto this. I'll make sure this image goes out to the organizations that can use illustrated planetary imagery.

Steve Gale