Jupiter Under A Wolf Moon

You have to love the Indian names for the various full moons throughout the year (so much better than the inane "Super Moon" hype we have had the last few years when full moon coincides with perigee). So this week was the Full Wolf Moon¹ - and while you might expect evening temps in the 20s or lower under a Moon with such a chill name, we actually caught a break. Temperatures were a tad above freezing and a bit of humidity in the air offered some stability to the atmosphere.

When I am on the fence about setting up the equipment for a session I usually do a quick check on two things:

1. Will the Great Red Spot be visible?
2. Are the Galilean moons doing anything noteworthy?

Well fortunately the GRS was due to make an appearance, transiting a little after 8:30 local time, so even though Jupiter can be awesome with unpredicted features on any night, I knew that on this night I could catch GRS for the first time in 2014.

The Wolf Moon trailed Jupiter in the eastern sky as I set up the scope, camera, and laptop. It served as a pretty good target for fine tuning my focus, although I prefer a little more terminator to work with. For whatever reason it took a solid half hour to get everything set and ready to roll, hands growing colder as I tweaked and calibrated to the best of my ability. Finally a little after 9 I started capturing, and I could tell right away on the screen that the Great Red Spot was visible and clearly past central meridian.

As usual the southern edge of the SEB preceding the GRS was the most intense cloud feature. The SEB itself appears bifurcated pretty much throughout this side. The NEB has some hints of a couple of festoons, and the NTB seems to be a bit more compact and intense longitudinally near the meridian. All in all a nice start to 2014!

¹To catch up on the names of the other 11 full moons check out Weird Full Moon Names of 2014 Explained over on Space.com