[Image at left is Copyright 2004 by Jesus R. Sanchez, Cordoba, Spain. Used by permission.]
I went out to watch the Io transit on the night of the 28th, and found the seeing to be excellent. In my TV-102 and 3-6mm Nagler Zoom eyepiece, I could easily make out not only the Io's shadow, but the tiny little moon itself. There was an enormous amount of detail visible in Jupiter's belts, and the view was so nice that I decided to try to capture at least some of it in a sketch. I sketched the main belts and shadows very quickly, added Io and its shadow, and then paused to just watch as first the shadow and then the moon itself left the planet's disk. Watching Io separate from Jupiter was a real treat in the little zoom, which let me back out for sharper views or zoom in close to see the exact moment that black space appeared between the moon & planet.
Once Io had moved on, I went back and firmed up the details on my sketch, verifying the festoons and things that I had drawn in. It was only intended to be a rough sketch, not one for publication, and could not really capture all the visible detail. Normally, I would have gone inside immediately and touched up a few things, like making Io a single circle. Instead, I set the sketchpad aside and moved on to Saturn and another 90 minutes or so of observing.
A couple of days later, I found an image of Jupiter online that was taken at about the same time. When I compared it to my sketch, I was impressed enough with the similarity to post them both online.
Note that Mr. Sanchez's original image is dated 29 February, because his images are dated in UTC. Also, I have mirror-reversed his image to match my sketch, which was made through a refractor with a mirror diagonal. To see more of Mr. Sanchez's images on his own web site, click on his name above.
One last note: You may notice that I missed the blue festoon just above Io, and the dark circle at the edge of the South Polar Region (upper right). The problem here was that I started drawing from the wrong side, and they rotated out of view while I was watching Io leave the planet's disk. Next time, I'll remember to start drawing from this edge first!