Viewing Jupiter

I had a good time observing with my two older kids (9 & 7) this weekend, especially trying to see surface detail on Jupiter. This reminded me of the best view that I've ever had of Jupiter, which was a couple of months ago (8/26 to be precise). I set up around 8.30pm that night to start the cool down process, and as it started to get dark around 9pm I poked around at the usual good targets from my light polluted back yard. I had some family in from out of town, and I dragged them out one by one to look through the scope.

Around 9.30pm Jupiter poked up over the roof of my house. The seeing was bad with the house heat rising up and the view of Jupiter was nothing impressive.

Around 10.30pm I took another look, through my 13mm Ethos. I saw one of the moons (not sure which one) just about to start transit - and had the family out to take a look. About 20 mins later the seeing steadied out fantastically - and WOW! The view was astounding! So much clear surface detail and the Great Red Spot was front and center.

By now the family were clamoring the see what was going on. The moon was now well into transit, seeing all the cloud belt details, GRS, moon transit & shadow on the surface. Literally tack-sharp with seemingly perfect seeing. Even my wife (who isn't an astronomy fanatic) was blown away by the view.

Around 11pm I swapped out the Ethos for the Stratus 21mm + a 2x barlow - so roughly 270x. AMAZING! The planet was taking up what felt like almost 50% of the field of view, with so much detail that I was stuck to the eyepiece for another hour. I would probably have kept viewing all night if it weren't for the fact that I needed to be in the office by 7am the next day ...