Night Sky Astronomy

Posts Tagged ‘jupiter’

Unfortunately I didn’t see many of the Geminid meteors at all.  I went out on the 12th December for about an hour, intending to solely keep an eye out for them, but got sidetracked by the Moon and Jupiter.  They were both high up in the sky and shining brightly. It was a very clear night.  I had both the telescope and the binoculars out and the moon showed up brilliantly.  Looking at Jupiter, I couldn’t see any of the moons this time which was a shame.  This may be because Jupiter is getting darker and further away now, since its peak in November.  In between looking at these two, I did scan the night for the Geminids and saw two shoot over the sky, coming from a Northerly direction and moving towards the West.

I went out occasionally over the next three nights, but there was a lot more cloud in the sky.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see anymore Geminid meteors, so will have to wait until next year’s show!

Time: 20:00 – 21:00, Longitude: 50.435423, Latitude: -4.093217, Viewing: North and East

Finally the skies cleared and I was able to use my new binoculars for the first time.  It also coincided with the moon coming into range outside of our back door, so it was excellent timing.

The view that greeted me was excellent.  The moon was crisp and bright and was magnified enough to almost fill the whole viewing area.  As the binoculars only have a magnification of 10, I wasn’t really expecting much more, but the view was a lot better than what I had with my other pair.

As Jupiter was still shining brightly in the sky, I decided to give looking at it a go as well.  Jupiter is much much farther away,  so I didn’t think for one minute that I would see anything bar a small ball of light in the sky.  And I didn’t.  But to my surprise, I could just about make out two bright dots slightly to the right of the planet, which I assumed to be two of Jupiter’s moons.  So if any one can clarify that the two dots were the moons, please leave a comment on this post, as I would very much like to know. 😉

So all in all, I was very pleased with the new binoculars, and for £15 it was a very good buy.

Time: 19:30 – 19:45, Longitude: 50.435423, Latitude: -4.093217, Viewing: North East

I had to wait a whole week until the weather was good enough to go out and use the telescope again.  This time I went out to try and see the brightest star in the sky, but I still didn’t know fully how to use the telescope so it was a bit hit and miss.  I didn’t realise that I had to line up the viewfinder with the telescope beforehand, during daylight hours.  So when it came to trying it in the dark, it was very difficult to find the correct direction.  After several attempts, I finally locked on to the star but still couldn’t see it very well.

Having spent some time trying to view it through a telescope and binoculars, I decided to go and try and find out what it actually was.  After searching through several sites, my wife found that the star was actually Jupiter and during the month of October, it was the brightest it will be for a long time (see link in the right hand side column).  Whilst we were looking up about this, I learnt to find the ‘Square of Pegasus’ and where the North Star (Polaris) was in the sky.  This was useful as Jupiter is situated just below the ‘square’ which made it easy to find.  What made this extra relevant was that the ‘Square of Pegasus’ was right in front of us in the sky (North East) when we stood in our back yard.  This made it really easy to pinpoint other stars, planets and constellations, and we think we pinpointed Neptune further to the East.

(image taken from ‘The Sky X First Light Edition’)

Armed with this new information we went outside to have another look but, unfortunately, it had started to cloud over so we were unable to use the telescope anymore.  We did attempt to use the binoculars and thought we had zoomed straight in to Jupiter and saw a moon or two orbiting it, but we aren’t sure as the image kept changing.  We think the binoculars are a bit dodgy (they were only very cheap!) so we can’t be 100% sure of what we saw.   Will need to buy or borrow some binoculars to make sure.

So it wasn’t the best viewing but I did at least learn a lot of things about the Sky and its stars and constellations, and wherever I am now, I know how to find Jupiter as long as I can find the ‘Square of Pegasus’ first.

Time: 19:45 – 21:30, Longitude: 50.435423, Latitude: -4.093217, Viewing: North East