On this evening, I had one of the most unique and special views of Jupiter that I have ever had. It was a view that had it all. It started when I first just looked through the 80mm finder of my 12.5" dob and noticed a triangle of dots framing the planet. In the eyepiece at 107X the arrangement of three of the Galilean Satellites along with two rather bright field stars was wonderful. Then in a moment when the extremely awful seeing steadied I noticed the small black dot at the meridian of the northern zone. Then in another flicker, I thought I noticed the Great Red Spot. I put in a 7.5mm eyepiece for 243X magnification and the picture became clear. It was the Great Red Spot and a shadow transit of the Galilean Satellite, Callisto.

I did these two pencil sketches to best represent how I saw things at the two magnifications described above. Not very much detail could be made out due to the very poor seeing conditions with Jupiters declination being so low plus the rather unstable conditions observing over the ocean.