A report from the field by SF Stargazer Albert Schultz
Our first club observing session of the year, Mar. 29, 2025, was hampered by cloudy skies. Four hopeful members assembled at the Cowboy Shack during dusk. While there were a few brief breaks in the clouds, allowing us a guessing game of “What’s that star?”, we gave up a little after 9 pm.
The best observation of the evening was noting that one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons was missing: close study of our sky apps showed that Ganymede was eclipsed — not occulted behind nor transiting in front of the giant planet, but invisible in its shadow a little to the side of the bright disk. And right on time, the next cloud break confirmed the end of the eclipse: Ganymede next to Io, and the missing fourth dot was back!