Clear sky, fairly steady seeing, and a chance to “sleep in” the next day. Get out the telescopes!

I was out looking at Jupiter, which was 14 days past opposition (when it is opposite of the sun in our sky), and it was the best view I’ve had in years.

I started with the 120mm Skywatcher refractor, then dug out the 20 year old 8″ Dob for better magnification. I noticed that Ganymede had recently passed in front of Jupiter. At my maximum practical magnification of 163x, I could see the shadow of Ganymede just near the edge of Jupiter, as well as several bands and the Great Red Spot.

Here is a computer simulation of what was visible.

Went in at around 10:45 to get Ellie up. After she staggered out, she was able to see some of these features on Jupiter too.

After a few minutes she pointed out the Northern Lights to me. I knew this was a good possibility as I had read earlier that there was a large coronal hole in the sun that was spewing lots of solar wind our way.

spaceweather.com

There was also a forecast that we would be able to see something, but I didn’t expect it to be this energetic.

spaceweather.com

They were suddenly getting really active, so I sent her in to get Naomi. She came out and checked out Jupiter and the aurora. Together we watched the rapidly changing and moving aurora. We saw lots of bright greens, but also reds and purples which are more rare and are indicative of higher energy particles hitting the atmosphere.

Ellie and Naomi checking out the cosmic show.

With such a good display on, Naomi went in to get the other kids. That was when Ellie noticed that there were suddenly aurora directly overhead

… and then it disappeared just as the other kids came outside!

It is possible that the auroral ring grew larger and moved south of us, or that the aurora just stopped, but in any case, we suddenly had a very tired young man who had just staggered out of bed.

While the kids were all out, they had a chance to see Jupiter, but we also had a flyover by a Russian rocket body, Cosmos 1782, launched in 1986. Later on, I witnessed two other Russian space junk fly over the same spot as I was hunting for a comet that should have been visible. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find it because there was too much light pollution from all the street lights to be able to see enough guide stars.

One other highlight was that I was able to see one bright meteor from the Lyrid meteor shower, which are dust and small bits of material left over from Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher. People have been watching this annual meteor shower for about 2600 years.

All in all, a great night of observing. Thank you Lord!