January 23rd 2014 "Jupiter in my sketch book...Mars on my mind".

Due to the terrible weather conditions these past few weeks I've only been able to grab a few moments of observing time. 

The rain has stopped many a decent observation!  

Lets hope February, March and April are kinder. 

Fingers crossed for excellent Mars observing over the next couple of months. 

GRS and Io.

January 22nd 2014 Jupiter.

January 20th 2014 Jupiter.

January 19th Jupiter.

Plato Sketch 09/01/14 .

Early morning Jupiter & Daylight Astronomy.

The skies were cloud free at 5.00 am , I decided to grab the C8 and does some observing, with perhaps a bit of astrophotography.

Jupiter was a splendid object, very bright in the 20mm erfle eyepiece.

All four Galilean moon were easily spotted.

With the 9mm eyepiece in place the planet's North and South Equatorial belts stood out easily.

The North and South Temperate belts were not that noticeable, the seeing wasn't as good as I had expected.

The North and South Polar Regions were visible, the South was noticeably the brighter of the two.

Here is this morning's quick sketch:

As the night turned to day I tried a bit of daylight Jupiter observing.

The image detail of the planet in broad daylight was slightly better - I took a few shots.