It's with some sadness that we bid Saturn a temporary farewell in the evening sky. Earth's progress in its orbit has brought us around to the side of the Sun where Jupiter is currently travelling, leaving Saturn too low in the west to see it from the East coast. Interestingly, I just got back from a trip to California and out on the West coast Saturn is still high enough after sunset to get about an hour of viewing. We'll give Saturn a well-deserved rest, and when we see it next year those rings will be opened up a few more degrees and the view will be even better.
Meanwhile Jupiter has begun to dominate the evening sky, and in the past week literally hundreds of people have seen it (and its moons) from my usual outpost on the sidewalk in Hampton Beach. This has been one of the clearest weeks in recent memory, and the first time I can remember doing sidewalk astronomy four nights in a row without any interruption for cloudy weather.
We also had a few nights where the waning gibbous moon rose early enough for some clear views.
I have started handing out 4x6 cards with some lists of local astronomy resources (club web sites, web sites for Stellarium and Cloudy Nights, etc.). On the back I put a reproduction of the page of Galileo's notebook in which he made the first sketches of Jupiter's moons in 1609/10. I may have to raise my estimates of how many people looked through the telescope, last night I gave out 30 of these cards in 2 hours, and that was mostly to kids. I think I have been underestimating how many people look through the scope, but I guess I'm having too much fun talking to people to count them!
