What does Saturn look like in a small telescope? What does Venus look like in a small telescope? What does Mars look like in a small telescope?
What does Saturn look like in a small telescope? That is the most popular item on my blog – the place more people go to than any other!
So, here are photos of Saturn, as well as Venus and Mars, all taken on two nights – May 18th and 19th, 2012, all except one, through my 8-inch dobsonian (reflector) telescope.
If you look at the photo before you click on it (unless you have a wide-screen and you’re looking close-up), it’s how Saturn looks in a small telescope.
Then click and you’ll get an idea of what Saturn looks like in a large telescope. (You may have to hit the ‘back’ button to get back to the post.) This is a snapshot, unprocessed. Your view through a large scope will be a bit smaller, but sharper, with Saturn’s faint cloud belts, a thin gap splitting the ring in two and Saturn’s brightest moon, Titan nearby.
Here’s a shot over-brightening Saturn to get an image of Titan, faint, to the lower left. It’s more obvious in the eyepiece.
Here’s Venus, now visible low in the west, right after sunset.
Almost any binoculars or telescope will show Venus as a tiny crescent, looking like a miniature crescent moon. First the view through my 9 power finder scope, Venus at the bottom of the frame. I took this photo I took with my Canon XS held up to the eyepiece. The thick black lines are the cross hairs in the finder scope.
Here’s Venus taken through the telescope with the Canon XS attached directly to the scope (“prime focus”). This is the same way I took the photo of Saturn, above. Notice how much larger Venus looks. Venus is smaller than Saturn, but it’s much closer.
Venus will get lower in the sky each night in May, with a slimmer crescent each night, but larger from end to end by a little bit each night.
Now for comparison, here is Mars, taken the same way. Mars is smaller than Venus and further away, so it’s tiny, even in a large telescope. Details are hard to see, except perhaps at high power and with a steady sky.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of planets through my scopes.
Westchester Amateur Astronomers’ Newsletter for May 2012
See the almanac on page 15 and the rest of the great articles, including a list of upcoming activities!
May2012 WAA Newsletter
Enterprise tours her new neighborhood
Just wanted the post the best of the photos I took today from downtown Manhattan of the Shuttle Enterprise atop its carrier aircraft, followed by an escorting NASA T-38.
Click to see detail – you can almost read the name.
Canon XS with 200 lens.
Sunspots are back
After a while with a mostly spotless sun earlier this month, several groups of sunspots are forming.
I took this photo on Saturday April 21st before the clouds closed in.
Click on the photo to see the sunspots better.
Sunspots seen though telescope with Kendel solar filter
I took this photo with my Canon XS attached to the telescope (‘prime focus’) 1/250 seconds ISO 400. The telescope is my old 60mm Orion refractor. The old mount is a bit wobbly, making a steady photo a challenge.
Make sure you use a good solar filter before observing the sun through a telescope or binoculars!
Heads UP! Big East Coast Storm Sunday night to blot out the wonderful night skies
There is so much to say about what is happening in the evening sky – so we’ll just make this note shorter by having a major east coast storm blot out our skies for the weekend and keep skies mucky for the following week!
What snow lovers wouldn’t have given for this storm a few months ago! A low forms in the Gulf of Mexico, moves up the east coast, and is met by a shot of cold air and additional energy.
So we start with rain on Sunday, becoming heavy overnight, with strong winds later Sunday after noon and early Sunday night (potentially sustained 30 MPH, gusts to 50. Then the cold air wraps around the storm on Monday, pushing a cold front through early Monday from the southwest. The front could be accompanied by heavy showers and thunderstorms.
Those who put their arks away during our recent dry spell will need to watch out for significant flooding Sunday night if we get the 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches or more of rain. Thus says the Weather Service:
MAIN STEM RIVERS SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY PROBLEMS...BUT SMALL STREAM AND SIGNIFICANT URBAN/POOR DRAINAGE ARE POSSIBLE. HARD DRY GROUND DUE TO LACK OF RECENT RAINFALL...AND STORM DRAINS THAT HAVE NOT YET BEEN CLEARED OF WINTER DEBRIS...MAY ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTE TO RUNOFF IN THESE AREAS. THIS RAIN WILL HELP ALLEVIATE THE MODERATE TO SEVERE DROUGHT CONDITIONS.
Just so astronomers don’t feel left out – the recent new moon will help raise higher than normal tides, despite the moon being near it furthest away from us for the year.
Then the storm gets so tangled up that it trips over itself and stumbles over northeastern Pennsylvania late Monday, getting dizzy as it pushes moisture around it and over us for a few days of occasional showers until a new high pressure system gets tired of waiting around and pushes the unsettled weather out of our around Friday.
So next weekend might be nice for the solar telescopes at the Northeast Astronomy Forum at Rockland Community College.
Here’s a map of simulated weather radar, with the heaviest rain, in yellow, over us near midnight Sunday night/Monday morning.
From the NOAA National Environmental Prediction Center at
http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/NCOMAGWEB/appcontroller
Westchester Astronomers
Click on the link, above to get to the Westchester Amateur Astronomers newsletter for April for the list of sights to see in the sky this month and our upcoming events and columns. (And on our website -two of those photos are mine!)
Large contrasts – bright Venus next to sublime star cluster, plus another moon shot
Photo of Pleiades and (overexposed) Venus less than 2 degrees apart (the width of this view)
Pleiades and Venus
You can see this with binoculars pointed near Venus after dark.
On this very clear, but very windy night, I used photoshop elements to put together a mosaic of the Moon. There is some fuzziness near the terminator, but otherwise very sharp – as you can see if you enlarge the photo.
Individual photos were 1/120 second ISO 400 with Canon XS attached to telescope with adapter (‘prime focus’).
Moon - composite of five photos of parts of the moon taken at prime focus of 8inch dobsonian
