Odds and Ends

It's Friday night, new moon weekend, and the sky over the Lost Pleiad Observatory is covered with high thin clouds...what happened to the clear sunny day?!?!

I was surfing the internet for some information related to observing Jupiter and quickly learned that the southern equatorial belt (SEB) on Jupiter has disappeared!  Typically, even very small telescopes will reveal the two main equatorial belts in Jupiter's atmosphere.  The famous Great Red Spot exists in a hollow within the southern belt...or, it used to.  Currently, it is hanging out by itself, as seen to the left.  It turns out that the SEB has disappeared historically; once in the 1970's and as recently as the early 1990's.  The image to the left was taken by Mr. Anthony Wesley from Australia.   Mr. Wesley is the same individual who first reported the impact scar from a cometary impact on Jupiter last July.  The image to the right was taken by Mr. Christopher Go from the Phillipines and is a composite showing the disappearance of the SEB over several months.  Read more about the disappearance of the SEB on space.com.

Another odd and end is the following video that documents some of the history of Celestron Telescopes.  It is quite interesting...

The Path Of Light (Episode 1) from Celestron Telescopes on Vimeo.