Jane Houston Jones wrote:
> Nice shadow transit of Callisto at about 8:00 p.m. 1/17/03.
> Nice moon lineup with Calisto near the planet then Io and
> Europa close together on the east side, and Ganymede alone
> on the west, but a couple stars thrown in on both sides to
> confuse everything.
Yep, I'm confused. I didn't get out with my 12.5" Starmaster 'til just
before 9:00pm, really just to check out Saturn (breathtaking!), but when
I looked over at Jupiter, I thought all four moons were to the west of
the planet, with the two nearest the planet's limb sitting on top of one
another. Jupiter was only about 30-degrees above the horizon at the
time, and I thought there was a relatively bright star just to the east
of Jupiter's limb. After observing Jupiter for a bit, I *thought* I'd
witnessed an occultation of two moons. Was I just seeing stars? (No
pun intended.) I need to bring Jupiter up on _TheSky_ or _Starry_Night_
to figure out what it was I was seeing.
Saturn was just magnificent last night, as was the seeing. (Thanks for
the heads-up, Phil!) Probably the best I've ever seen it from San Jose
... in a non-AP 'scope, that is. Just blew my neighbors away, too. If
the seeing tonight is as good as it was last night, be sure to get out
there! In addition to Titan, I think I spotted five moons in Saturn's
immediate vicinity. Time to do my homework to figure out if some of
these were actually stars.
...Bob...
Bob Czerwinski