Well, as was the case across most of the state, lingering afternoon clouds thwarted my marathon plans last night. M74, M110 and M77 all remained veiled behind thin cirrus and by 8:30 pm, I decided to put more focus on the "party" aspect of a star party. About 20 folks from the Coconino Astronomical Society, Sirius Lookers of Sedona and Amateur Astronomers of Verde Valley had gathered at the Two Trees site between Sedona and Cottonwood. Most weren't there to marathon. Those of us who were, had abandoned the effort in favor of planetary observing after a couple of hours. Jupiter and his entourage put on a nice display. It was about 9:15 pm when I turned my 10-inch to Jove and saw Ganymede's shadow north or the North Equatorial Belt (NEB) and just inside the following limb. Another smaller circular feature was visible along the central meridian north of the NEB. Thus, ensued a vigorous debate among several of us about the more central object. Was it a satellite or a shadow? The fact that it did not appear jet black in color led me to conclude it was the satellite casting the shadow that had recently begun transiting the disk. Finally, somebody found the March issue of S&T and the debate was resolved: it was Ganymede. In the interim, we saw Europa disappear behind the Jovian disk. At about 10:15 pm, Io began a disk transit. This event was followed about 25 minutes later by Io's shadow ingress. And just a few minutes after that, Ganymede moved off the disk and against a dark night sky to confirm that the object of our earlier discussion was, indeed, a satellite. All-in-all, we had a fine evening despite the early cloudiness. Regards, Bill Ferris "Cosmic Voyage: The Online Resource for Amateur Astronomers" URL: http://www.cosmic-voyage.net -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.