Jupiter (Plus... some new equipment)

Yesterday (Thursday) I had a nice surprise and found that some new equipment that I'd ordered Monday had arrived already.

First off I got to open the new 31mm Baader Hyperion Aspheric eyepiece that I settled on after a few weeks of research. It gives me just under 20x magnification, an exit pupil of 6.2mm and a true field of view of 3.72 degrees (where 1 degree = about the width of 2 full moons). I wanted a wide field eyepiece to get a bit smaller view of the star clusters I've been enjoying and also to double as a finder scope.

Second I opened up the new Green Laser Pointer (GLP). They normally cost $70 to $100 but Astronomics had them on sale for only $30 and I couldn't pass it up. (As of this writing they are still that price, so get 'em while they hot!) Here's a link to a picture showing how the GLP looks when you use it.

The GLP is a very fun and useful tool, especially when you're out viewing with kids or anyone else who is not familiar with the night sky. It is just like a regular laser pointer except that when you point it at the dark night sky you can actually see the laser beam as it shoots off into space. This means you can use it to point at something in space and everyone standing near you can follow the beam of light with their eyes to see what you're pointing at. Did I mention that it is also just fun?

So, I used the new equipment as an excuse to invite my pal John (who doubles as my attorney) over for an evening of stargazing. We looked at Saturn, one or two binaries and the beehive cluster before the durn mosquitoes drove us inside. The 31mm Aspheric did just what I'd hoped it would do. It made it easier to find the beehive and it also gave me a smaller, wider field view of it. Very nice.

But, that's not the point of this post.

This morning my lovely bride had to get up extra early for work (4:30am). This is annoying, but it did give me an excuse to get out of bed to view Jupiter before the sun came up. I've been dying to see Jupiter to see how my 120ST would handle it. After all, seeing Jupiter at a big public star party through a 12" dob last September is the reason I got into astronomy in the first place.

So I got out of bed, went out side and set up my scope kit at about 5am. Jupiter was beautiful. I couldn't see as much detail as I had last year through the big dob, but I could just make out the bands of color and a couple of moons (I couldn't see the big red spot, though). The purple fringing was definitely annoing so I put on the 80mm stop down mask and it made the image much more tolerable.

Off to the right of the image I saw 2 objects which I knew immediately where two of the four Gallilean moons. Off to the right, on the same plain as the right hand objects but much farther away was another object, but I thought it was too far away to be a moon. Almost straight up from that was something else, about the same brightness as the others, but definitely not a moon.

So, after looking for a while I checked out the S&T site and their Jupiter moon tool. After clicking the "inverted" button (to match the view from my refractor's image) this is what came up:
So, I determined that the objects on the right of Jupiter were Io and Europa and one of the left side objects was Callisto. The other object, straight up from Callisto may have been some random star, but I read in a magazine yesterday that Jupiter and Neptune are very close to each other right now. In fact, they may be found in the same field of view (they come closest together by mid-July, if memory serves).

So, the other object may have been Neptune, but I can't say for sure just yet.

I was a bit disappointed that my view of Jupiter wasn't as detailed as what I saw last Fall, but I expected that. I knew that, with the 120ST I was sacrificing planetary detail for portability, but it still made me yearn for more detail.

On the plus side, the 120ST was perfect for getting up early and setting it up quickly in the backyard. I can bring out the scope, tripod and all my accessories out back in one trip and the whole thing takes less than a minute to assemble with no cool-down time.

That part was perfect and I continue to be very pleased with my scope choice. Next year or the year after that I'll start thinking about something bigger to get me both more planetary detail and a wider variety of DSOs. Perhaps a 10" of 12" dob. We'll see. I want a new focuser for the current scope first, and I've already spent more than enough money on telescopery this year as it is.