The weather around has not been at all conducive for Jupiter viewing so far
this apparition. Having said that Jose Suro HAS gotten some nice images, and
he's just 15 or so miles south of me. Tonight looked good though. Not too
cold (~49F), clear with a chance of patchy fog. That usually means steady
skies.

Not quite. I studied Jupiter for about an hour and got maybe 5 minutes of
"good air." Io was in transit. I could see the shadow, but the seeing would
occasionally blur it out of existence. Once, I thought I spotted the
silhouette of Io, but that may have been averted imagination.

In the few moments of good seeing, I did note that the South Temperate Belt
is basically split into north and south components, plus there is a healthy
zone south of them. The Great Red Spot was just rotating on, and I caught
some of the turbulence in the South Equatorial Belt preceding the GRS. In
the Equatorial Zone, I could see some loop festoons in the area of Io's
shadow, but never got a good sense of exact shape. The North Temperate Belt
is still "missing", but the North North Temperate Belt is pretty dark.

During that hour I also poked around a few other things, hoping that the
seeing might settle down.... all related to discussions here.

I tried to spot Sirius B. No luck. Might have done better if I knew the
position angle.

Checked on Porrima. Looked quite round and single. It will be fun to watch
the separation grow again.

Once I decided that the seeing wasn't going to improve, I finished with M3.
There was enough haze from the first hints of fog that the sky background
wasn't too terribly dark. Even so, I could resolve many individual stars.

So here I sit at the computer with no sketch of Jupiter to show for my
efforts. Am I upset? Heck no. I DID see some nice detail on Jupiter... just
not reliably enough to put it on paper. I also visited a couple of other old
friends of the sky, and I didn't even freeze.

It was a good night.

FOR THE RECORD:
Telescope: 15cm f/10 Newtonian
Eyepiece: 7mm Orthoscopic (215x)
Seeing: 4 out of 10
Transparency 4 out of 6
Feb 20 4:35 - 5:35 UT

Craig in Tampa