Jupiter is finally starting transit (i.e., reach its highest point in the sky each night) in the wee hours, lending for some excellent views. Jupiter is reaching a higher altitude in the sky this year than in previous years and will continue to improve before the cycle begins to take it lower in the sky each year.
The seeing was very good with reasonably good transparency throughout the session for these views of Jupiter and Europa. The combination of altitude, resulting in less atmosphere to look through to see the planet in the night sky, and very good seeing are making for better views than we’ve had since the 2011-2014 apparitions.
I’ll update this post with additional images as I have time to process data. The first is a multispectral set of images (meaning through different filters, as marked on the image). This was taken shortly after Europa completed its transit across the face of the planet. The GRS is barely seen rotating out of view. There are a number of bright spots in the Northern Equatorial band (look it up if you don’t know which one that it). This is not too uncommon, but these spots are very bright and numerous making for some interesting features to track over the next few months.
Here’s another shot from earlier in the evening with the shrinking GRS nicely placed with Europa below and to its left (along with the barely visible Oval BA!) and one more from later in the sessions with a full-sized view of the RGB image above.
