Echos from 1994

One regret that I (and likely many other observers have) is losing observations that we recorded, sometimes of once-in-a-lifetime events. In preparing for an eventual downsizing, I started to tackle going through the accumulation of papers and files in the basement. I collected and scanned my loose-leaf logbooks and have lots of wonderful observations from them. I was disappointed, however, that I did not come across any from the summer of 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter in spectacular fashion. And then this week – voila! I uncovered about a dozen observations of Jupiter from that year. And yes, among them a few of Jupiter post-impact.

Looking at them brought pleasant flashbacks. One of the most dramatic sights I have ever had the good fortune to witness as an amateur astronomer was those amazing bruises on the giant planet so readily seen in my modest telescope.

For those who were not yet observing (or not yet born) in July 1994, a brief reminder: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had been torn apart by Jupiter’s gravity on an earlier close pass and was on a collision course. Between 16 and 22 July a string of fragments slammed into the giant planet’s southern hemisphere at roughly 60 km/s. As the impacts rained down on Jupiter just beyond the limb as seen from Earth, we anxiously held our breath as to whether we would be able to see any evidence of the hits. To everyone’s surprise and delight, a short time later dark, high-contrast debris fields rotated into view and remained prominent for months.

Amateurs around the world suddenly found themselves observing features that rivaled or exceeded the Great Red Spot in visibility. My own records begin a few days after the bombardment.

20 July 1994, 1:10 UT

Telescope: 6-inch f/8 Criterion RV-6 Newtonian at 124× 

Seeing 5/10, transparency 1/6 under murky, humid hazy

My drawing shows two large, dark oval spots sitting near the south temperate region. My notes still convey the astonishment:

“Through murky, humid haze came the view of a lifetime – I could scarcely believe how dramatic and contrasty these two impact sites are! Oval & featureless like 2 sunken eyes, (they are the) first objects you notice when looking at the planet. Other major belts are visible, no features noted but serious study impossible due to large number of public at our observing site wanting a view. Following spot transited ~ 10 pm EDT.”

For context of that report we were set up at an outreach site (while not noted in my report I am pretty sure it was out at the Irvine Nature Center on the grounds of St. Timothy’s School in Stevenson), and the impact scars were so obvious that people lined up for a look even under mediocre transparency. The “sunken eyes” description still feels exactly right – featureless, ink-black ovals that dominated the disk the moment the planet came into focus.

 

25 July 1994, 1:30 UT

Same telescope and magnification 

Seeing 4/10, transparency 1/6 

On this date three distinct scars were visible. The central one was especially impressive:

 “Kind of hazy but seeing fair; the central spot is incredible, easily size of GRS and noted readily even at 70×. The spots preceding & following are readily seen with the following one weakest of the three. Hard to see either a STB or NTB.”

 

The drawing shows the three dark spots strung across the southern latitudes, still high-contrast enough to punch through a mid-summer haze.

 

8 August 1994, 1:20 UT

Again the RV-6 at 124× 

Seeing 4/10, transparency 3/6  

Nearly three weeks after the final impacts the scars were still unmistakable:

“Three large spots noted, the central one having a darker core I believe and showing signs of being stretched out E-W. Spots are still incredibly contrasty & easy to see. STB noted with a gap in it but no oval present west of the CM. SEB split, NEB darkest belt with a notch on south side west of the CM. NTB very vague, NPR evident.”

The central scar had begun to elongate east-west, yet the overall visibility remained remarkable for features that were, after all, simply debris suspended high in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Looking at these notes and sketches more than three decades later, several things stand out. First is the sheer drama and significance of the event itself – nature delivering a never-before-seen planetary-scale collision that even modest apertures were capable of revealing. Another aspect is reflected by the fact that a simple 6-inch Newtonian battling summer haze was more than adequate – and  that rewrote how we looked at the threat from comets or asteroids impacting a planet. While I do not have access to ALPO reports from that summer, I suspect even a quality 80mm refractor would have been up to the task.

Will anyone look at my recording of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 crash as seen through my little scope in a couple decades from now? Not likely. It will fade into the backwaters of the internet or be completely lost again fifty years from now. But for the moment there is joy and satisfaction in holding in my hands once again my documentation of one of the most momentous astronomical events visible to amateur astronomers in the 20^th century.

 

A Subtle Southern Saturnian Decagon

The start of September saw an unexpected announcement by NASA. With the help of amateur astronomers and the HST, a new feature was uncovered in Saturn’s far southern hemisphere that is gradually swinging into view. This decagon feature – a ten‑sided wave pattern encircling the planet’s south polar region, is analogous to the famous northern hexagon but far more subtle. In a validation of the merit of amateur observations, Trevor Barry’s meticulous IR imaging offered the kind of sustained, night‑to‑night coverage that professional telescopes can’t provide, giving scientists the confidence that the feature was genuine and not an artifact of limited sampling.

Location of Decagon Feature (credit: NASA)

While Trevor’s equipment and expertise far outstrip my setup, I was still curious as to whether I may have inadvertently captured it during two imaging runs on nights of above average seeing.

My first attempt actually came before the announcement. On August 26, with above‑average seeing and Saturn riding high enough to justify a late session, I put the 742 nm IR‑pass filter on the QHY5III462 camera and captured a long sequence. At the time, I was simply trying to record what the ringed planet was showing – maybe get lucky and record a spoke (see last month’s blog entry) or even a low-contrast white spot storm. In hindsight, that dataset became my “pre‑discovery” attempt.

After the story broke I was back out again on September 8, this time using the Baader 685 nm R‑IR long‑pass, which has become the go‑to wavelength for amateurs trying to tease out faint polar wave structures. The seeing cooperated again, and I collected a solid run of data with the Cyrus 10-inch f/6 Newtonian telescope using a 2.5x Barlow.

Both evenings provide some nice images. The decagon feature lies at around -60°, so just north of the dark band that is part of the South Pole complex. I started by inspecting that latitude for any sign of a low-contrast belt, but I could not discern anything.

Saturn Sept 8, 2026

Doing a little research, plus seeing what some other skilled amateurs were doing, I decided to run the images using the WinJUPOS polar projection functionality. A polar projection gives you a better chance at seeing the decagon because it removes the very geometry that hides it in a normal “frontal” view. In a standard equatorial presentation, the south polar region is heavily foreshortened, compressed into a narrow oval, and partially affected by limb darkening. A stereographic south‑polar projection, on the other hand, unwraps that entire region into a true top‑down map: the latitude circles become concentric rings, the polar hood boundary becomes a clean contour, and any geometric modulation (such as a ten‑sided wave) can emerge. Alas, this also failed to expose the decagon’s existence.

Polar projection map and approximate location for decagon

This subtle southern decagon may or may not be within reach of mid‑aperture telescopes. But the only way to find out is to keep pointing our instruments at Saturn and comparing notes. With my new experience of generating a polar projection map, even this “failure” comes with a silver lining of adding another skill to my processing resume. In the meantime I’ll be watching ALPO submissions closely as Saturn reaches opposition to see if other amateurs succeed and, if so, what equipment and techniques they employed.

A Spoke-tacular Observation

It happens perhaps once or twice a year – if you’re lucky. The seeing is exceptional, coming in at a solid 8 or 9 out of 10, the planet’s image on the laptop screen offering glimpses of details normally seen in the post‑processing sharpening.

The morning of August 26th turned out to be just such a blessing. The near‑full Moon illuminated high, thin clouds covering about half the sky, but Saturn was unencumbered by them and shone steadily from its pocket of unusually calm air. The video stream of the planet featured a Cassini Division that looked like it had been cut with a razor. The southern hemisphere displayed its finely shaded band structure, and even the C‑ring seemed to pop in and out of view. I eagerly began my captures – one never knows how long good fortune will last.

After a couple of completed videos I did a quick stack of one. I was immediately drawn to a shadowy smear on the following (eastern) ansa of Saturn’s B‑ring. Could it be a spoke?

Spokes are among the most fascinating phenomena in Saturn’s ring system. They look like shadows or smudges dabbed onto the rings, but they’re not shadows at all – they’re ring material suspended above the ring plane. And they’re quite transient: appearing, fading, shifting, and reappearing over timescales of minutes to hours.

What are these strange, ephemeral markings? Our current research – initiated by Voyager, supplemented by Cassini, yet still evolving – is that spokes are made of micron‑scale icy dust grains that have been electrically charged. When conditions are right, these charged particles can be lifted slightly above the ring plane, forming streaks that appear dark or bright depending on illumination geometry.

The charging mechanism seems tied to the solar wind interacting with Saturn’s magnetic field. When the solar wind is strong or variable, it can disturb the planet’s magnetosphere in ways that promote dust charging. Once charged, the particles respond to electromagnetic forces rather than purely gravitational ones, allowing them to levitate and drift.

Spokes are also seasonal. They become most common and most prominent near Saturn’s equinoxes, when the Sun’s angle on the rings is shallow and the solar wind’s influence on the magnetosphere is more direct. We are definitely in “spoke season,” since Saturn reached its autumnal equinox about fifteen months ago, and the ALPO is receiving multiple observations from advanced amateur imagers.

The extraordinary seeing did not last more than about half an hour, gradually falling back to average over the two and a half hours that I imaged. After a recovery nap, I set about processing the videos. To my great delight, it was quite clear – especially in an animation of the IR captures taken early in the session – that I had indeed documented a spoke as a dark radial feature in that eastern ansa. It lasted long enough to survive derotation and stacking, showing as a distinct dusky streak cutting across the otherwise uniform brightness of the B‑ring.

Animation of spoke movement on
left ansa over 15-minute period

Catching a spoke feels a bit like winning the lottery – witnessing something subtle and strange, something that Voyager first hinted at and Cassini explored in depth. They remind us that Saturn’s rings are not static but rather a dynamic, electrically active, constantly shifting system influenced by magnetism, sunlight, plasma, and dust. They epitomize the reason I’ll set the alarm for 2 a.m. and set up the telescope in hopes of snaring the unusual – and in doing so, contributing in some small way to planetary science.

A Name Among the Minor Planets

Astronomy has a way of giving us moments that stop us in our tracks — a perfect opposition, a night under Bortle‑2 skies, a comet that arrives unannounced. This summer brought one of those moments for me, though of a very different kind: at the behest of my friend Rik Hill, the International Astronomical Union officially named minor planet (45639) Tomney in my honor.

It’s difficult to write about something like this without feeling self‑conscious. The night sky has always been the real reward – from that 60mm Monolux that first showed me the Moon’s craters, to the RV‑6 that carried me through my early planetary adventures, to the more recent years of imaging the planets with modern tools. My journey has never been about recognition; it has been about curiosity, community, and the quiet satisfaction of contributing something useful to a hobby that has given me so much.

Still, when I learned of the naming, I felt a deep and genuine gratitude. The citation in a way validates my work modernizing ALPO’s digital presence and preserving tens of thousands of observations – efforts that began in earnest over six years ago during the pandemic years, when the silver lining of remote work gave me the ability to take the reins of the ALPO gallery to transform it into a repository rather than a scrapbook of interesting photos. And given my nature that then grew into a much needed full redesign of the ALPO website which today has advanced search functionality of more than 45,000 observations. Like pulling a thread this has subsequently led to championing an ALPO SPLICE training initiative to help our members increase the quality of their images and thereby the value of the repository. All represent labors of love, shaped by decades of learning, tinkering, and a passion born in a young grade-school boy all the way back in the 60's under those early Towson’s skies.

The naming of a minor planet is not a finish line. It’s a reminder – that amateur astronomy thrives when people choose to show up, to share, to teach, to preserve, and to build. I’ve been fortunate to do those things alongside generous friends, dedicated observers, and welcoming organizations like HAL and ALPO. If my name now circles the Sun, it does so as a symbol of that shared effort.

As for me, I’ll hopefully keep doing what I’ve always done: chasing the planets from the driveway, coaxing deep sky images from the Vixen, helping new observers find their footing, and working to ensure that what I've helped build today will still be useful and maintainable for tomorrow’s amateurs and researchers.

Carpe Noctem!

Binocular Blessings

Every summer I’m reminded that amateur astronomy doesn’t have to begin with a telescope. In fact, some of my fondest observing memories come from evenings years ago from family vacations in Maine. The boys were young and after they were tucked in for the night, I’d slip out to the porch overlooking the lake and settle into a chair. The ambience was peaceful and calm, punctuated by the occasional splash from a small mouth bass or haunting loon call. The Milky Way hung above the lake in the east with a view that spoke of God’s majesty. With nothing more than a pair of 7×50 binoculars that I had packed, I’d sweep those summer celestial vistas – clusters , nebulae, even a few galaxies – and feel the quiet satisfaction of discovering the sky one small field at a time.

Why Binoculars Work So Well for Beginners

Although I was hardly a beginning amateur astronomer in those days, until that time I really did not have the appreciation of their worth. Binoculars are instant astronomy. No alignment. No cooldown. No setup. You step outside and you’re observing.

They also match how we naturally use our eyes – both open, scanning, comparing, noticing patterns. The wide field of view makes the sky feel familiar rather than intimidating. You’re not hunting for tiny objects in a narrow eyepiece; you’re exploring.

And they’re affordable. A perfectly serviceable 7×50 like the Celestron Cometron runs around $50, while more serious observers can step up to something like the SkyMaster Pro ED with BaK‑4 prisms and ED glass. Either way, you’re spending far less than even an entry‑level telescope.

But the real magic is what you can see.

A Backyard Night Under Bortle 8 Skies

As part of my research on how well binoculars can work for an observer wrestling with light pollution, I spent a late June evening in my Towson backyard – a Bortle 8 environment with porch lights, trees, and a limiting naked‑eye magnitude around 4.25. Hardly pristine. But – could my trusty 7x50 binoculars still show me some of the celestial showpieces?

From my observing notes:

“Started off with some double stars… Alberio is quite hard to discern… but a better one is that double near the blinking planetary of Cygnus… the brighter one definitely appears to have an orangish tint… the secondary is white, perhaps a slight bluish tint.”

Even in suburban light, color contrast doubles pop beautifully. The Cygnus 30–31 pair — one orange supergiant, one white‑blue giant — is especially rewarding.

“Moving on to the double‑double in Lyra… very easy and clean to split… equal in magnitude and color, whiteness, with brilliant Vega in the field.”

Epsilon Lyrae is a perfect binocular target: bright, easy to find, and visually striking.

A little after midnight, the deep‑sky objects began to reveal themselves:

“Using the 7×50s for M13… you can definitely see two stars and a chubby little cloud… doable with the 7×50s, but in the 15×70s it is quite apparent and easy.”

“Following the tail of Aquila… M11 can be discerned as a tiny fuzzy patch… and again, far more apparent in the 15×70s.”

“Broche’s Cluster… the 15×70s picked it up readily… in the 7×50s you can definitely make out the coathanger asterism.”

“Above the teapot… M8… a fuzzy something in the 7×50s, more distinct in the 15×70s.”

These are exactly the kinds of objects that reward beginners: bright clusters, colorful doubles, recognizable asterisms, and nebulae that appear as soft glows rather than faint whispers.

Sharing the Views

A few nights after that backyard session, I brought my 15×70 Oberwerk binoculars to the HAL public star party and set them up on a mount so visitors could enjoy a steady view. It turned into one of the most rewarding outreach evenings I’ve had in a while. People were genuinely surprised at what a simple pair of binoculars could do – the Moon’s craters sharp and bright, Epsilon Lyrae cleanly split into its twin “headlights,” and M13 hanging there as a distant, ancient ball of unresolved starlight. Many had never looked through binoculars for astronomy before, and seeing their reactions – that mix of delight and amazement – was a reminder of how powerful these simple instruments can be for opening the sky to newcomers.

Binoculars offer something telescopes often don’t: confidence. You learn the sky faster. You recognize patterns. You begin to understand how objects relate to one another. And you get immediate success – something every beginner needs. Even for us veteran star gazers, an evening in the lounge chair with a pair of binoculars to scan the sky makes observing less of a technical challenge and more of a simple pleasure.

I still think back to that Maine porch experience, spending hours with a simple pair of binoculars discovering the summer sky one field at a time, being surprised at just how much I could pick out from that dark sky. My hope is that more folks could discover the heavens, and binoculars are one of the best ways I know of to begin that journey.

A Jovian Superfecta

Earlier this month I was hoping to get in another imaging session for the current Jupiter apparition, with the planet still standing relatively high as the May twilight deepened. I started in “White Light” (color) and quickly saw that the Great Red Spot (GRS) was rising and so I’d have it well positioned. The seeing however, was definitely sub-par, probably a 3 (maybe a 2?) out of 10.

Yet even under this mediocre seeing, it occurred to me that this was an opportunity to try for a wavelength superfecta, capturing the planet and its iconic storm in four different lights: WL, Infrared (IR), Methane (CH4) (UV), and Ultraviolet. It was a little challenging due to the low transmission I get in the CH4 and UV bands, causing the frames-per-second to drop dramatically. In such situations I leverage 2×2 binning, which groups four pixels into one. That makes the target effectively brighter, boosting the signal through this very dark filter. But it also reduces the image scale, so Jupiter appears slightly smaller and less detailed than in my unbinned captures.

The result was an interesting mosaic showcasing how Jupiter presents a different and scientifically valuable appearance in these varying bands of light. Each wavelength highlights a different altitude, particle size, or scattering process in the Jovian atmosphere. The GRS, being a deep, long‑lived anticyclone with complex vertical structure, becomes a perfect case study.

White Light

White light is the “baseline Jupiter”, the view closest to what the eye sees. It is a blend of scattering from cloud tops and deeper layers. The GRS’s color comes from chromophores (complex molecules produced by photochemistry) concentrated in its upper haze.

• The GRS appears as a salmon‑colored oval embedded in the South Equatorial Belt.
• Contrast is moderate because white light integrates photons from many atmospheric layers.

Ultraviolet (UV)

UV images emphasize high‑altitude hazes and aerosols. UV absorption is dominated by photochemical hazes. The GRS has a thick, vertically extended haze cap that blocks UV, making it stand out as a dark feature.

• The GRS typically appears dark in UV because its upper haze absorbs strongly at short wavelengths.
• Surrounding high-altitude haze regions appear bright.
• The UV view often looks “sharper” because it isolates the uppermost layers.

Infrared

Near‑IR wavelengths penetrate deeper into the cloud deck. IR brightness correlates with cloud-top altitude and temperature. The GRS’s anticyclonic upwelling lifts ammonia clouds to higher, colder levels, making it a strong IR reflector.

• The GRS often appears bright in IR because its cloud tops are higher and colder than surrounding regions.
• Belts and zones invert their contrast relative to visible light.
• Even though seeing is often steadier in IR, on this particular night it was not a huge help with poor conditions.

Methane Band

The methane absorption band is the most altitude‑selective of the four. Methane imaging isolates the highest cloud layers, with low-altitude features vanishing almost completely. The GRS’s brightness confirms its vertical extent and the strong upwelling at its center.

• Bright areas in CH₄ indicate very high-altitude clouds that reflect sunlight before it can be absorbed by methane.
• The GRS is usually bright in methane band because its cloud tops extend high into the upper troposphere.
• If you look closely you can also make out tiny NN-LRS-1 near the same longitude of the GRS but in the Northern Polar Region of the planet.

The GRS changes appearance because each wavelength samples a different combination of scattering, absorption, and cloud height. The storm’s vertical structure is complex: a tall central canopy, deep roots, and a surrounding turbulent wake. Multi‑wavelength imaging is one of the few ways amateurs can probe that structure directly.

If you’ve never tried imaging Jupiter beyond one-shot color, you may want to consider expanding your armamentarium to include some additional filters. I’d start off with an IR as it is the easiest and also has the advantage of being a mild antidote to poor seeing. Later on adding a simple UV or methane filter can expand your imaging opportunities of the planet and provide additional valuable scientific information. Jupiter rewards curiosity – and it rewards imagers who look at it in more than one light.

More Than Pretty Pictures

Five years ago, when I first took over posting gallery submissions, the ALPO’s Digital Section was still operating much as it had for decades: images came in, were displayed, and had little consistency in terms of meeting basic guidelines that would capture useful information about the image. Certainly useful, but not easily searchable, and not structured in a way that supported scientific work. That was the moment I began the long process of indexing every Solar and planetary submission, extracting timestamps, system longitudes, filters, and feature tags. The goal was simple: turn the gallery into a true image repository.

Today, with more than 40,000 indexed images and sketches, that transformation is finally visible. And this year’s Jupiter Pro–Am collaboration tied to JWST and Juno’s Perijove 81 proved its value. Because the gallery is now searchable, we were able to provide the research team with rapid ground‑based context during a very narrow observing window. That is exactly what “from stargazing to science” should mean — not a slogan, but a capability.

But the strength of the repository depends entirely on the quality of the observations our members submit. And with nearly 95% of modern contributions coming from imagers, we need to ensure that members feel confident producing clean, scientifically useful data.

That is why we are launching the SPLICE Mentoring Program this summer.

SPLICE — Solar, Planetary, and Lunar Imaging with Computer Enhancement — reflects the modern workflow of high‑resolution imaging far better than the old “lucky imaging” label. The process is systematic: capture, rank, align, stack, sharpen. Don Parker demonstrated this long before digital sensors were common, and his legacy forms the backbone of the SPLICE approach.

The mentoring program is designed for ALPO members who are new to imaging or looking to refine their technique. Participants can work with ALPO‑provided sample videos or with their own data, learning to use accessible open‑source tools to produce scientifically valuable results. The goal is not just a prettier picture — it’s a contribution that strengthens the long‑term archive.

Because this is a one‑on‑one program, we will begin modestly with one to two mentoring sessions per month. My hope is that experienced ALPO imagers will step forward as additional mentors so we can expand capacity over time.

Revitalizing the ALPO will come from building confidence, strengthening community, and helping observers feel that their work matters. The SPLICE Mentoring Program is one more step toward making “from stargazing to science” a reality, and ensuring that the next 40,000 images are even more valuable than the first.