Hi All,

The bright stars you are seeing in the sky this morning are the Planets Venus & Jupiter…..

Venus is the brightest of the two and is located in the Southeastern sky, you can’t miss it!!!!

Jupiter is due South, go out and look between 6:00 am and 7:00am,
I did just before taking the kids to school..........

Do it before daylight ruins the view. They will be visible for the next few Months.

Here is one of my photos of Jupiter from this morning…..

Jupiter was taken from my backyard observatory in Dayton, this morning with a Toucam Pro 2 webcam, 2.8x klee barlow, and 10" SCT operating at F17.4. Temperature was about 16F this morning, cold but the atmosphere was a little more stable than usual.

Jupiter Shadow Transit of Io on 02/09/06 with the Great Red Spot (GRS) on the bottom left of Disk.

The GRS is a 700mile per hour hurricane, it has been visible on Jupiter since the invention of the telescope over 400 years ago.

The black spot at the center of Jupiter is the Shadow Transit from Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon Io’s shadows, the moon's shadow is crossing Jupiter's cloud tops. The Shadow transit is like an eclipse, the sun cast the shadow of the Moon Io onto Jupiter’s clouds tops.

The other 3 bright moons (Callisto, Ganymede, Europa) are currently outside the field of view.

The two dark red bands at center are Jupiter's Main Equatorial Belts.

The little green/blue wiggles on the disk are Jupiter’s Festoon Cloud features.

These features are all visible to the eye in a typical small telescope, even though Jupiter sits over 500 million miles away.

This Jupiter Image was taken at 07:10 am this morning…….it was practically daylight, and was starting to interfere. So I did not have time to nab Venus!
Maybe tomorrow!

Best Regards,
John

Attached Images

Jupiter020906a.jpg (90.2 KB, 48 views)

__________________
Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

excelent shot

__________________
A witty saying is funnier the first time you read it

Nice image.

I caught as much of the Io transit on the morning of the 2nd as conditions permitted until the fog and dew took over.

Nice photo and commentary, John. Thanks for sharing.

__________________
Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

Very good!