I always look forward to Jupiter oppositions in the winter
zodiac. The current apparition has the giant planet hosted among the stars of Gemini,
riding about as high as possible in the night sky for mid‑northern observers. The
combination of it gliding above the worst of the turbulent atmospheric and long January nights (where in theory you might capture an entire rotation
in a single session) are exciting prospects.
But winter is winter - especially in the Baltimore area. The
cold is one thing to contend with, but even more of a spoiler are the clouds and
unstable seeing. I’ve often felt that our region’s winter skies offer fewer
usable nights than any other season, and it turns out that impression isn’t
just grumbling. According to long‑term climatology, the region’s winter sky is
overcast or mostly cloudy about half the time. And while I cannot find data on “seeing”
I would bet we get most clear nights checking in at a 1-2 seeing level on
the scale of 1-10.
Which is why the night of January 7–8, 2026 felt like such a
small miracle.
The forecast from Astrospheric earlier that day told the usual winter story: cloud cover and seeing models leaning pessimistic, barely reaching “acceptable” levels. The kind of forecast that normally has me planning a short session – an hour, maybe ninety minutes – before the clouds roll in or the seeing collapses (or the cold gets the best of me). But heck, why not roll the dice? After all, Jupiter was a couple days from opposition, so prime time.
When I stepped outside around 8:30 PM, the first surprise
was the temperature. It wasn’t bitterly cold, which meant I could stay chair‑side
instead of retreating indoors between captures. I’d already set the scope out
earlier to cool so I started my “pre-flight checklist”
- Confirm
the spotting scope alignment
- Dial
in a very solid collimation
- Check
transparency (a respectable 7–8 by my estimate)
- Gauge
the seeing (somewhere between 3 and 5, with brief moments of better
steadiness)
With the QHY camera running through SharpCap, I was getting
a very respectable 130+ fps in white light. I began a cadence of four‑run
sequences every 15–20 minutes, each run a two‑minute capture. Europa was
approaching the disk, with a transit predicted just after midnight – another incentive
to keep going as long as the sky allowed.
And, surprisingly, the sky did cooperate. As I wrapped up each
imaging run I was like a gambler pushing his luck, thinking “just one more
capture before you call it quits”. Before I knew it, it was midnight and I had
seen about half a Jupiter rotation at this point. Now my appetite was whetted
for that elusive full rotation capture. I did some quick calculations in my
head and figured I’d have to hang in there until close to 4 a.m. in order to
see the GRS, which had started off setting, come back into view. I decided to
go for it and did a meridian flip to ensure I could track the giant planet as
it headed west in the sky.
By 3 a.m. I could see that some patchy clouds were finally
working their way into my region, dropping the transparency a bit. About an
hour later the Moon showed a bit of a halo around it, further evidence of deteriorating conditions. And while that sort of haze is not always a killer for
seeing, in this instance I could see that it, too, was slipping as the early
morning wore on. I took the final sequence at from 4:15–4:30 a.m. with the
seeing slipping down to about a 3. But I had it – there was the GRS rising into
view signaling I had seen the full planet’s cloud features pass in front of me.
Yes, nights like that are rare in January. The forecasts
don’t encourage you. The statistics don’t encourage you. And yet, every so
often, the sky relents just enough to reward persistence. My reward on this night
was a nearly full rotation, a Europa transit, some enjoyable visual observing
of the planet between imaging runs, and a cool map documenting Jupiter as it
came to opposition in 2026. Yep - if this is how my 2026 observing is going to
go, I’ll take it!
