I tried a hybrid route this time: from my High Park 'hood along Bloor West, to Islington, the little loopy thing to Burnhamthorpe (passing the RASC National office), over to the 427, up to 7, over to 50, briefly, then jumped onto Clarkway. Remarkably, all this went pretty smoothly. I continued along Clarkway until I came to a couple of stop signs. I jogged over to Gore Rd and took it to 9.
Outside Shelburne, I tried Champ Burger this time. I believe I agree with the fans: it is better. Blipped over to the Shelburne No Frills for a quick shop before they closed, just enough stuff to get me through Friday morning. Then I continued north. Oops. I had meant to do the Windwill Route along 10 but I forgot. Force of habit.
I arrived at the CAO at about 9:30. I quickly unpacked the car and then opened the Geoff Brown Observatory. Once the netbook was reconfigured for the site wifi, I checked my email. Phil had sent an email at 9:17. Said he had just called the CAO. He wanted to remind to view the black spot, from the object collision, on Jupiter. Right! I had intended to view Jupiter but I was still a bit dishevelled. Trying to get organised. I fired up Meebo and saw Phil was connected. Pinged him shortly before 10 PM but he wasn't at the keyboard. I returned to unpacking and reviewing.
I stumbled across a note in my palmtop, cryptic, something written in haste: "Jupiter moons." I looked at the Galilean moons by software simulation. Yeah... So? I didn't notice anything in particular. What did my note mean? Transiting across Jupiter? Shadows on Jupiter? Fall into the King's shadow?
Phil chimed in at 10:34. We established a video link. He encouraged me to chase the collision spot on Jupiter and pointed out it was following the Great Red Spot by about 2 hours. OK. Good data. We maybe chatted for 30 minutes.
I looked up the GRS transit times from Sky and Telescope. The next meridian crossing would be on 31 July 2009 at 3:46 UT. That meant 11:46 PM for me.
I checked Stellarium on the netbook, in particular, the view of Jupiter's GRS. It was not correct for the meridian information Phil gave me. I tuned the solar system information file (ssystem.ini) in Stellarium and set the rot_rotation_offset to 180. There! That was better. It was 23:21.
I also looked at Wesley's photos of the impact... Mostly to verify the pole it was on—same hemisphere as GRS. Hmmm. The spot seemed to be dispersing.
Finally I got the C14 going and aimed at Jupiter. Wow! Jupiter was on the left, there were 2 moons (Io and Europa it turns out) on top of one another! Like splitting a double star! The next moon (Callisto) was close to the two. And finally the last moon (Ganymede) flanked them all. Wow.
The GRS was a bit left of meridian, very pale, on the top (this was a mirror-reversed view with the eyepiece assembly rotated. North was down, east was to my left).
The Tele Vue Panoptic 27mm offered a lovely view at 145x. But it was fading in and out with the thin clouds passing through.
It was 11:46 PM. I was finally settled. The GRS was at the meridian. I was ready—in 2 hours—to try to catch the black spot!
DAMN. It suddenly occurred to me what was special about 10:39 PM. It was a note I had seen on the RASC calendar. One of the Jovian moons was going to cast a shadow on the other. Later, there was to be a partial occultation of the 2 moons. I had missed it! The shadow incident had happened while Phil and I were chatting. The occultation had occured when I was tuning Stellarium. Damn.
I continued viewing the bright planet. I tried using the Tele Vue Radian 13mm but it was way too much. Everything was very blurry and very dim at 301x. The TV 18mm was better (217x) but still dim with the surface details softened. I went back to 27.
I noted that Io had moved from Europa and was heading toward Callisto. The GRS was moving toward moons, in my view.
There were some power brown outs around midnight but I was unaffected in the GBO. The Dell laptop controlling the telescope was fine, of course, on its battery. The ASUS netbook merrily carried on. The Paramount ME, dew heater equipment, electronic focuser were fine, powered by the UPS. I headed into the house for a snack. Put my red goggles on before I opened the fridge door. Mmm, fresh cherries! Took off goggles. Suddenly, the power went off again. I was almost blinded by the emergency lights coming on! AAAAHHH!
§
It was 12:42 AM on 31 Jul 2009. I checked our local weather conditions by viewing the CAO weather station web page.
- light wind at 3.2 km
- outside hum 75%
- barometer 1009.7 mbar
- temp 16.4°C
- dew point 12.0°C
- house temp was warm at 25!
- humidity 54%
- temperature 20°C
12:49. I thought the seeing and transparency conditions were improving. The large tube currents were decreasing. The cloud cover was dissipating. The GRS was continuing to the right toward moons. Now Io was almost half-way between Europa and Callisto. No black spots or smudges.
While I wasn't looking at deep sky objects, I was struggling a bit with the bright computer screens. I had them both configured to use a red-based Windows theme. I was running the astronomy programs in night-vision mode. And I had brought a dark red theatre cel. But only one. I kept moving it back and forth between the LCDs. I was juggling which computer I'd use to view bright web pages. I should, next time, bring all red cel sheets I have; not necessarily the one for my computer...
It was 12:53. I was really feeling the day's early start now. I had stayed up late Wednesday night, until 1-ish. No good reason. I awoke, for work, at 5:45 AM Thursday morning after snoozing the Psion alarm a couple of times. This was tough. I was feeling really tired now. And I had 1.5 hours to go...
I pounded back a Coca-Cola. We'll see if that helps.
Where's a Jolt Cola when you need one?!
2:05 AM. The moon had set. I was feeling very tired and sore. Before packing up, I took a reading with the Sky Quality Meter: 21.78.
I had stared at Jupiter for a long time. The GRS, equatorial belts, various festoons, had been a pleasure to watch. But I had not see anything obvious at the pole. No black spots. On occasionally, in brief moments of clear seeing, free of thin ice-laden clouds on this Earth, I would see some different shades of grey at the pole.
No comments:
Post a Comment