Hi everybody,
Last August was an unexpectedly productive month despite the low altitude of Jupiter from Italy!
I could record at the end an amazing amount of 14 sessions with a decent seeing at least!
I also spent a 2 weeks holiday in a wonderful vulcanic island called Pantelleria lying in the strait of Sicily half way between Sicily and Tunisia, at 36.7N latitude, together with my trusty Gladius which could deliver some nice view of Jupiter climbing up to 37 degs.
You can learn more about this island through the Wikipedia or other related websites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantelleria
Due to the steady windy conditions (Pantelleria is the italian of the arab ‘Bent el Riah‘ which means ‘daughter of the winds’) and orography (a 836m tall mountain and other hills are there) seeing conditions were heavily affected by wind direction, thus I moved myself around several sites of the island to look for the best conditions accordingly.
The sky was nothing short the best I could see so far in my life, expecially at the top of the tallest mountain! Unbelievable Milky Way, Jupiter was even casting a weak shadow from up there! Shame on me I had no dobsonian to play with!
The complete set of images will follow over next few days, meantime you can enjoy with a trilogy of images which do portrait the 3 most important features going on the gas giant: the impact scar remnant during opposition, the GRS and the BA Oval.
JUPITER 2009 TRILOGY
Just be sure to expand the view up to 100% with your browser.
The first image is surprisingly good despite the quite low altitude of the planet, this leaves very good expectations since next year when Jupiter will finally climbs in the high 40s from here!
The NEB is nothing short of amazing given its own metamorphosis from a longitude to another. At the contrary, the boring SEB always look the same at any longitude and it’s even missing of the usual turbulent ovals train which used to follow the GRS over last years.
To follow, detailed images with datas filled in.
Thank you for your viewing!
