Coachella Valley Astronomy and Astrophotography: Jupiter 2-26-16 Europa, Io Transit and Great Red Spot

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Jupiter 2-26-16 Europa, Io Transit and Great Red Spot

I've been going over the data that I captured on February 26, 2016 and have finally had the time to post about it. I captured a first in my personal astronomy book. There was a double transit of Europa and Io, and I was able to catch the shadows of both along with Io itself and the famous Great Red Spot! This was the first time I've been able to actually capture a Moon transit of Jupiter. I have previous images of shadow transits, but could never quite capture the Moon itself. The seeing was 4/5 for some the night and near the end of my session it dropped to a 2/5 and a few thin clouds. The images start out great and get a bit worse as the transition was ending. So, unfortunately the best pictures of the night were before the best parts of the transits. I'll take what I can get thought, right?

To be honest, I was sadly disappointed with the weather here in the Coachella Valley during Jupiter's March 8 opposition. I had hoped to capture some data that night and post them, but had to settle for my last viewing opportunity which is what you see here.

Images taken with a Celestron Nexstar 6se + Phillips spc900nc webcam 2x barlow. The first 3 I used a little digital zoom from the webcam.