[AZ-Observing] Jupiter Events

For folks who like Jupiter's moon events, tonight may be pretty neat.  As
soon as it starts to get dark (actually starting about 6:45pm local time) Io
and Calisto will be transiting the planet's globe and they will merge about
8:20pm while still in transit at which time Io's shadow will also be
visible.  Don't know if I will be able to see the 2 moons themselves.
Later, about 11:10pm Io and Europa will merge well off the planet and about
12:15am tomorrow morning Calisto and Europa will come very close together,
about 1 arc sec also well off the planet.  Around 4:11am Calisto's shadow
will appear.  The GRS will also transit starting around 1:20am.

Pretty active night for Jupiter and the weather looks good so I'm taking a
5" refractor out.  Last night using the same scope I saw Calisto occult the
9.5 mag star, TYC 1396-149-1.  It was cool - the star was very dim compared
to Calisto and it merged with the moon's glow rather than winked out and the
same thing happened when the star reappeared on the other side, it emerged
rather than turned on.  I would guess that the star and the moon were
separated by about 1.5-2 arc sec when I lost sight of the star in Calisto's
glow and they were a little farther apart when I noticed the reappearance. I
was using 166x and 208x. Seeing was pretty bad, maybe 5/10 at best.  I've
seen a bunch of these moon events over the past several months but I still
find them fascinating.  Watching the rapid changes in real time is
something.

Regards,

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ

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