Ours and Jupiter's. These moons were the targets of observation for this astronomy session.
"Why moons?" you ask?
Well, it has been many weeks since we had a break in the clouds sufficient to support dragging out the equipment for an astronomy session. Withdrawal symptoms were manifesting themselves.
This Sunday morning, there was such a break. Sadly, the Moon was 80% illuminated and dominating the sky. It was so bright that it was like being under the sky in a light polluted city. Almost all of the stars were washed out!
I decided to embrace the Moon's presence and use it as an opportunity to play with the equipment. It was bright enough that I almost didn't need to use any other sort of lighting during the session.
It also turns out that at 0515 EST, Jupiter's moon, Io, was going to make a transit preceded by its shadow. If you've never watched a shadow of one of Jupiter's moons slowly creep across its face, you are really missing something exciting!
I had the equipment outside by 0100 EST and started with our Moon. I figured that I'd spend time there while waiting for Jupiter to rise.
Our Moon
I'm really happy with the field of view offered by the ZWO ASI294MC imager. I was easily able to capture data of the entire Moonface. I suppose I was less happy with how quickly the data chewed through the laptop's disk space. 😒
Click on the images to view them in a larger size.
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