It was the morning after a full night of observing at the Spring 2004 Delmarva Stargaze. I was sitting with a group of fellow astro-nerd/campers, talking about all we had seen the night before. It was about noon on Friday, April 16 and I was using a software program to plan the next night's observing when I realized a double transit (Europa and Io) on Jupiter was just beginning with shadows following.

I proposed an observing challenge  - to observe the shadow transit in daylight. According to the software, Jupiter would clear the tree line about by 5:00pm and at least one shadow (Europa's) would still be on the disk.

It was cloudless and transparency was very good. In addition, the seeing was very good - we had been looking at the Sun and were seeing an unusual level of detail across the entire disk.

My mount was already polar aligned from the previous night so about 5:00pm I synchronized on the Sun and then goto'd Venus, which proved to be very bright in the scope, very easy to see in the finder and easy naked eye - if you looked in just the right place. I focused carefully because my previous experience with planets in the daytime showed that good focus is critical to finding the fainter planets. That is, their contrast against the daytime sky is so low that even modest defocusing makes the planet disappear.

I then goto'd Saturn, which proved to be plainly visible in the scope but not the finder and, of course, much fainter that Venus. The Cassini division was usually visible along with at least one cloud band on the ball.

Next  I synchronized on Saturn and then goto'd Jupiter. Several cloud bands were immediately visible on Jupiter and a large festoon was obvious - and the shadow! In addition, we could see all four moons! Jupiter was also easy to see in the finder. The shadow was relatively easy to see in the scope. Two of the moons were close to Jupiter and relatively easy to find because I could focus my eye on Jupiter and then see the moons. The other two moons, however, were further out and proved more of a challenge. Callisto, the faintest of the moons, was the most difficult to find.

So we saw Jupiter, cloud bands, at least one large festoon, a moon shadow and all four moons well before sundown - a much better score than we anticipated. Although this was a first for the participants, I'm sure many others have done this before. A personal first time remains just as exciting, however.

- Lane