Friday, October 23, 2009

Jupiter

Jupiter's Great Red Spot has eluded me in the past so I made a special effort to look for it on October 18. A day on Jupiter is slightly less than 10 Earth hours and the spot is in a good position for viewing for only 100 minutes. Sky and Telescope (skyandtelescope.com) publishes the times when the Great Red Spot will be visible. I was fortunate to have a clear sky during the transit and I was able to see the spot clearly in both telescopes at the observatory. I was also lucky to capture an image with the A111 telescope that showed the GRS in the lower left of the above image. The spot's colour has faded in recent decades but it was still impressive.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Rare birds


Back on August 30th I was lucky and got to see and photograph the Black-throated Sparrow at Port Burwell. This was a new species for my Canada list and a bird I had hoped to see for a long time. On Monday a Black-tailed Gull was discovered at Port Burwell but I was not fortunate to see it. Such is the way of birding.