Well, I haven't posted one of these in a long while, but it's not for lack of observing. Most of my observing nights in the past couple of months have been Jupiter and Saturn sessions (though I've had a few nice views of Sagittarius and Scorpio objects, along with Scutum and M11 during this time).
I've managed 8 or 9 sessions with the giant planets since July 1 (with Mars thrown in a couple of times when I woke up, rather than stayed up, to view the planets).
My most recent session was Thursday night into Friday morning - August 25-26. I observed from my back porch in Southern, Maine. The temperature was around 66 degrees, and, as I would discover, skies were partly cloudy. According to Astrospheric, seeing was 4/5 and transparency was poor.
After re-aligning my red dot finder on Jupiter (which had gone quite out of whack, probably thanks to my cats), I moved over to Saturn, which was just crossing the southern meridian and a hair over 30 degrees in altitude. This is the highest it is getting from my latitude, so I try to take advantage of it when I can.
I stayed at 83x and then bumped up to 125x with a 6mm eyepiece. I quickly realized that things were quite a bit dimmer than usual. I went back to the 9mm eyepiece to see if I could spot Titan, and to my surprise, I could not.
I have unusually poor night vision. This is a big part of why I do a lot of lunar/planetary/double star observing, though I enjoy the brighter DSOs a great deal. Still, Titan is usually easy for me, even with the indoor lights I usually leave on when observing the planets.
After another couple of minutes, Saturn itself began fading in and out of view. I looked directly southeast into the Portland light dome, and I could see a number of high clouds which explained the problem.
I moved over to Jupiter which seemed to be above the muck, but after another 5 minutes, Jupiter was affected as well.
I almost packed it in at this point, as the conditions seemed to be worsening, if anything. However, I decided to give it a little more time, as the clouds looked spotty. I returned to Saturn, and after a short time, it began to brighten. With continued improvement I barlowed my way up to 166x. The Cassini division was pulsing in and out of visibility as it often does for me, but the central eq band was nicely contrasted against the rest of the planet, and the rings were clearly defined and separated from the planet's surface. (In poorer seeing, I find that the rings will "blend" with the disk, such that it becomes difficult to discern planet from ring). This night was at least better than that.
By now, Jupiter was nearing 40 degrees altitude and seemed to be out of the "cloud zone" so I returned to it. My mediocre session was about to turn great.
At 83x, the four Gallilean moons were well placed, with two moons on each side of the planet, almost looking like mirror images of one another. Unexpectedly, I could also see the 2 Equatorial bands quite clearly at 83x. No one here would dispute that good seeing allows one to see fine detail at high power, but I have come to find that good seeing ALSO allows one to see detail at LOW powers that might be largely invisible and require more magnification in poorer seeing.
I went up to 166x with the barlow, and views were very good. The great red spot was very prominent and approaching the meridian. I had not checked in advance for a GRS transit and I was very happy that I'd stumbled upon it. Some of the structure of the eq bands was visible along with some subtle banding poleward in the north and south.
Emboldened by my recent experience with 5/5 seeing (according to Astrospheric) on the night of the Io/Ganymede shadow transit (Aug 16-17), I tried 250x with my barlowed 6mm eyepiece. It worked really well on the 16-17th, so I thought it worth another try.
Unfortunately, the seeing on this night did not support this. The image was truly clear only for fleeting moments, and the loss of contrast and color that was almost negligible on the 16-17th seemed much more limiting during these brief moments of clarity.
I went back to 166x. The view was great, but I wanted a bit more image scale. I pulled the eyepiece out a bit, and it was ok, but then I remembered that my 2x barlow can be made into a 1.5x barlow. I don't do this very often, because I get nervous fumbling around with lenses in the dark, but I decided to go for it this time.
With the 1.5x on the 6mm eyepiece, I had about 188x and a 0.8mm exit pupil. THIS did prove to be the sweet spot for the night!
For the second time since buying this telescope (the first being the night of August 16-17th) I saw really nice detail in the space between the two Equatorial bands. The bands themselves showed undulations at their borders and darker and lighter regions. Festoons or long wisps of clouds were faintly visible in the Equatorial region between the bands. The colors I saw were white, cream, tan, gray, various shades of brown, and the dull rusty red of the GRS. ALSO - in this "equatorial in-between" I saw a rather distinct light yellow. I have gone online to try to find a name for this color with limited success. It is whiter and creamier than canary yellow or lemon yellow, but a good deal yellower than pancake batter or even egg nog. I have seen this mild yellow color behind ice cream counters sometimes, but as I am not in front of one as I write this, I cannot name the flavor associated with it.
My observations of this color were a bit fleeting and it did not cover a wide area. I have since found it in some professional pictures of Jupiter. I have only ever seen it twice in Jupiter's bands - on this observing session, and on the night of August 16-17th. It is sublime.
I spent about half an hour nudging and looking at Jupiter with this set up/magnification, and tore myself away at around 1am, as the clouds were re-grouping under Jupiter, and I had a full day of work the following morning.
It was, all in all, a very fine night.
**EDIT - In looking at several Jupiter pictures from the last few days here on CN, I am wondering if the light yellow color that I'm fawning over in my report above, might be the blending of bluish festoons with the tan background in the area between the two Equatorial belts. Maybe this is due to limited resolution and contrast. I love it anyway and I hope to see it again.**
Edited by CBM1970, 27 August 2022 - 09:47 AM.
at least for the small refractor. 
