The sky conditions were remarkably good this evening though with some patchy cloud. The jet stream was slow for once after stormy weather yesterday and the planets showed plenty of detail. I was lucky to catch the Great Red Spot on Jupiter with a simultaneous shadow transit of Europa at 22h10.

This evening Mars traversed the Beehive Cluster M44. It was a beautiful sight in the twilight but too low to photograph from the observatory so I made a sketch with the Dobsonian. The 1220mm scope coupled with the binoviewer and the 1.6x Barlow lens required to allow it to reach focus it was a gorgeous thing to witness, even if somewhat over-magnified hence excluding many of M44’s stars.

    Integration time (running total):
    * OSC best 15-25% of 500 frames
    

Last night was beautifully clear and remarkably timed for the occultation of Mars. At 1.5°W this took place at 04h58. The exit from the occutation exactly one hour later could not be imaged from the observatory because the Moon and Mars had disappeared behind the large oak tree in the West-North-West direction.