I just thought I’d drop an observing report on the 2 moon 3 shadow transit on Jupiter on the night of March 27/28 2004

Since my LX200 10″ was heading into the shop for some repairs, I had
to use the ETX-105 for this event.

I took my ETX-105 out to cool about 7:30pm. By 9:00 when I went out to check the seeing I saw the scope
was cooled down nicely and mighty Jove was very clear.
My EP of choice for the evening was a 10mm Radian giving me a magnification of 140 or so. this is a spectacular Eyepiece. I was able to see bands and detail in the bands that my normal
plossls don’t give me.

I watched Ganymeade start to transit with Callisto’s shadow already on the face. I was afraid I’d lose site of Gany once it starting making it’s way across the face, but it was visible to whole time. Io’s shadow was also very easy to see although I lost the planet
once it started to transit. I only wonder if I could have seen Io’s disk in the 10″ LX200.

Then around 12:10 or so PST I noticed the 3rd shadow starting to creep in. I stayed at the scope and watched until Callisto’s shadow was gone.

I did try a couple of other EPs including a 9mm Nagler and my Televue 8 – 24 zoom. The Nagler was nice and
crisp and I was even able to go to 8mm on the zoom with out much loss of detail.

All in all a good night for seeing an uncommon event.