Alright, this is for sharing of your observation experience. Or, if you are arranging gatherings, star-gazing expeditions or just want some company to go observing together, you can shout it out here.
It seemed clear in the evening so I went to East Coast jetty (near carpark C1) to observe. I was hoping to catch some DSOs and Jupiter. However, when I reached there, somehow it became cloudy and the stars were washed out. Therefore I only had Jupiter to look at. The GRS transit time I checked was 9.30pm and I was there early and setup at about 8.30pm. I read that Red Spot Junior (the smaller storm) was to collide with Great Red Spot at about the middle of this month and so I wanted to catch that if possible.
I have not seen Red Spot Junior so the more I wanted to catch it before I leave the place. The transparency and seeing was not good. Stars at the horizon flickled at about 4 to 5 times per sec. Jupiter was quite washed out but at some moments a lot of details could be seen. I finally saw Red Spot Junior when Jupiter rotated further till the GRS was on the 1/3 east side of the planet. Red Spot Junior was on the south of the GRS and almost touching. Initially it was slightly on the South West of GRS but after observing for 1.5h on Jupiter it shifted East slightly till it was directly south of GRS. It was nice looking at these two huge storms almost colliding with each other or perhaps brushing each other. The Red Spot Junior was about 1/3 the size of GRS which made it slightly smaller than Earth.
Have you guys observed Red Spot Junior recently or at NIE? What position was it then?
Red Spot Junior from what I saw from my scope has length (taking the longer part of the elliptical shape) about 1/2 of GRS length. Area wise does not look like GRS is 2x bigger than Red Spot Junior. The colour of Red Spot Junior is close to GRS but my scope reviewed the twirl and shades of GRS but Red Spot Junior's twirl could not be seen; it could be due to the seeing factor and its rather small size. I observed it at 300x.
From the article it looks like I am right that the Red Spot Junior was moving east away from GRS and sadly they never collided. But.. it was a near miss.
