Playing with my dob

So I carried my telescope down the porch and into the park a little while ago. Despite being in a light polluted city, the fact that we live 15’ from a park means that I can get fairly unobstructed views facing south and east. Anyways, I pointed it towards Jupiter, not expected much. As it turns out I had a really good look at it! This was my first time trying to see Jupiter and didn’t know what I’d see. To my amazement I could see some strips across the planet as well as what were obviously two moons. A little while later I could only see one moon (Ganymede) and thought the other one was behind the planet. I noticed a black dot on the planet too. Now that I’ve returned back inside the house and looking at cartes du ciel, I now realize that the other moon was Io, and that it moved in front of Jupiter and created the black spot. I think I also saw Europa, although I didn’t pay much attention to it. I used my 25mm elite plossl and 9mm star splitter.html), the SS (135x) worked really well. There was a “cross” of diffracted light on Jupiter, I think that was caused by the atmosphere / haze / seeing / whatever.

All in all, it was very cool