More on Jupiter

I couldn't get back to sleep after writing the last entry. I kept wondering if that extra dot I saw when looking at Jupiter really was Neptune. So, I got up and did some more research. It turns out that was I saw was NOT Neptune. They are not yet close enough together to be in the same field of view. Instead, what I was looking at was Mu Capricorni, a 5.0 magnitude star about 90 light years away.

To figure that out I went into my Starry Night software, found Jupiter and backed it up to about 5am this morning. Here's what it gave me after zooming in a bit:
Note that this image is NOT inverted (because Starry Night doesn't give that option, as far as I know). This is pretty much exactly what I saw, so the object above Callisto clearly wasn't Neptune. Too bad.

But, this result begs another question. This morning I clearly saw Io, Europe and Callisto. Where was Ganymede? According to Starry Night I should have seen it there off to one side of Jupiter along with the others. Instead, I saw this:
Io, Europa and Callisto. No Ganymede. This is taken from the Sky & Telescope tool. So, where was Ganymede? This puzzled me until I saw this on the S&T tool:
The times noted are in military time, and also using Greenwich Mean Time, so I have to subtract 5 hours to get my local time. So, early this morning, a few hours before I woke up, Ganymede was visible on one side of Jupiter, then it passed behind Jupiter, then it was visible again on the other side and then it passed into Jupiter's shadow, becoming eclipsed and invisible. At least that's how I interpret the text above. I'm still new at this.

The S&T moon tool accounted for this eclipsing, but the Starry Night software did not. If I had been outside at 4am instead of 5am I would have seen this:
Except, of course, that my image would have been inverted left to right because I'm looking through a refractor.

So, that solves the mysteries of "Was that Neptune?" and "Where's Ganymede?" I guess I'll have to wait a few more weeks until Jupiter and Neptune are visible in the same field of view.

But now, at least, I know where Neptune is. Using Starry Night and zooming out a bit gives you this:
If I get up really early again soon, I can use my wider field eyepieces to find it now. Fortunately the two planets will linger together in the sky for a while because, even though Jupiter moves faster than Neptune, they are going to begin retrograde motion in the coming weeks, increasing the amount of time they will appear near each other.

Ok, curiosity satisfied. Maybe now I can get some more sleep.

sigh... except the kids will be waking up soon. Too bad I have to work tonight. Ugh.

Jupiter (Plus... some new equipment)

Yesterday (Thursday) I had a nice surprise and found that some new equipment that I'd ordered Monday had arrived already.

First off I got to open the new 31mm Baader Hyperion Aspheric eyepiece that I settled on after a few weeks of research. It gives me just under 20x magnification, an exit pupil of 6.2mm and a true field of view of 3.72 degrees (where 1 degree = about the width of 2 full moons). I wanted a wide field eyepiece to get a bit smaller view of the star clusters I've been enjoying and also to double as a finder scope.

Second I opened up the new Green Laser Pointer (GLP). They normally cost $70 to $100 but Astronomics had them on sale for only $30 and I couldn't pass it up. (As of this writing they are still that price, so get 'em while they hot!) Here's a link to a picture showing how the GLP looks when you use it.

The GLP is a very fun and useful tool, especially when you're out viewing with kids or anyone else who is not familiar with the night sky. It is just like a regular laser pointer except that when you point it at the dark night sky you can actually see the laser beam as it shoots off into space. This means you can use it to point at something in space and everyone standing near you can follow the beam of light with their eyes to see what you're pointing at. Did I mention that it is also just fun?

So, I used the new equipment as an excuse to invite my pal John (who doubles as my attorney) over for an evening of stargazing. We looked at Saturn, one or two binaries and the beehive cluster before the durn mosquitoes drove us inside. The 31mm Aspheric did just what I'd hoped it would do. It made it easier to find the beehive and it also gave me a smaller, wider field view of it. Very nice.

But, that's not the point of this post.

This morning my lovely bride had to get up extra early for work (4:30am). This is annoying, but it did give me an excuse to get out of bed to view Jupiter before the sun came up. I've been dying to see Jupiter to see how my 120ST would handle it. After all, seeing Jupiter at a big public star party through a 12" dob last September is the reason I got into astronomy in the first place.

So I got out of bed, went out side and set up my scope kit at about 5am. Jupiter was beautiful. I couldn't see as much detail as I had last year through the big dob, but I could just make out the bands of color and a couple of moons (I couldn't see the big red spot, though). The purple fringing was definitely annoing so I put on the 80mm stop down mask and it made the image much more tolerable.

Off to the right of the image I saw 2 objects which I knew immediately where two of the four Gallilean moons. Off to the right, on the same plain as the right hand objects but much farther away was another object, but I thought it was too far away to be a moon. Almost straight up from that was something else, about the same brightness as the others, but definitely not a moon.

So, after looking for a while I checked out the S&T site and their Jupiter moon tool. After clicking the "inverted" button (to match the view from my refractor's image) this is what came up:
So, I determined that the objects on the right of Jupiter were Io and Europa and one of the left side objects was Callisto. The other object, straight up from Callisto may have been some random star, but I read in a magazine yesterday that Jupiter and Neptune are very close to each other right now. In fact, they may be found in the same field of view (they come closest together by mid-July, if memory serves).

So, the other object may have been Neptune, but I can't say for sure just yet.

I was a bit disappointed that my view of Jupiter wasn't as detailed as what I saw last Fall, but I expected that. I knew that, with the 120ST I was sacrificing planetary detail for portability, but it still made me yearn for more detail.

On the plus side, the 120ST was perfect for getting up early and setting it up quickly in the backyard. I can bring out the scope, tripod and all my accessories out back in one trip and the whole thing takes less than a minute to assemble with no cool-down time.

That part was perfect and I continue to be very pleased with my scope choice. Next year or the year after that I'll start thinking about something bigger to get me both more planetary detail and a wider variety of DSOs. Perhaps a 10" of 12" dob. We'll see. I want a new focuser for the current scope first, and I've already spent more than enough money on telescopery this year as it is.

Castor, Izar, More Saturn

I was out tonight for another nice hour or so of stargazing. I spent some time looking for M67 at the bottom of Cancer, but couldn't find it. So, I then picked my usual starter and spent some time looking at Saturn. I thought I saw another moon again, but only one this time, just to the left of the (inverted) rings. After checking out the Sky and Telescope Saturn Moon tool I determined that it was probably Rhea. I may have been imagining it as I saw it best with averted gaze, but I'm pretty sure it was there.

The other day I read that, as far as multiple star systems go, some are more difficult than others to "split" and a good test of your scope's abilities is the binary star Izar (aka Epsilon Boötis) in the constellation Bootes, which is fairly high high in the sky during the spring. So, after consulting my S&T star chart and figuring out which star that was I gave it a try. I was very pleased to see that I could make out both stars in the Izar system. One of them was definitely bigger and brighter than the other, and the bigger one really outshone the dimmer one. It was much harder to pick out than other binaries I've seen, but it was definitely visible at 140x.

This picture of Izar came from this site. There is some good information there in Izar as well.

I wanted to compare Izar to something reputed to be a bit easier to I pointed the scope at Castor, which is one of the two main stars at the head of Gemini. Castor was much easier to split than Izar. The interesting thing about Castor is that it isn't just a binary system. In fact it is a solar system made up of 3 pairs of binaries, making 6 stars altogether in one system. My scope could only make out 2 stars, though, at 140x.

That's about it, nothing too exciting. I'm still pleased about Izar, though. The 120ST is noted to have some variability in quality. The objective lens is not collimatable, so you're pretty much stuck with what you have. The fact that I could split Izar makes me feel pretty good about the particular scope I have.

Saturn, Beehive Cluster and Algieba

Last night was a beautiful night for stargazing. My wife and I and our two kids gathered in the backyard for a while to find some new things in the sky. This also confirmed that our backyard is superior to the local park because of the lack of tennis court flood lights. Still, the streetlight out front is a bit annoying and I try to set up the scope out of its line of sight.

There are also many large trees in the area, which limit our view of the horizon, but a fairly large chunk of the southern sky is visible stretching from west to east.

The most prominent constellation visible to us right now is Leo. We can still see the heads of Gemini (Pollux and Castor) off to the west as they hang above the no longer visible Orion as well. This meant that our first target (like usual lately) was Saturn, which is cruising through Leo this year and next before it migrates on to Cancer after that.

Saturn was really beautiful, both at 50x and about 140x. The city lights were bright enough that I didn't even need my my stop down mask, which is about the only good thing about the city lights. Now that I've been viewing Saturn for a while, I think I'm getting a bit better at picking out some heretofore unnoticed details. The planet itself is still a bit plain, and the rings are getting closer to edge on, but I did think I saw a couple of moons last night. I saw one of them just above and to the right of the planet itself, and another one above and to the right of the rings. (Given that the image was inverted left to right in my eyepiece.)

Sky and Telescope has an excellent moon tool for Saturn which allows you to enter a date and time and it shows you were each of the moons is when you look at it. It also allows you to invert the image if necessary. Based on it I think the two moons I saw were Titan and Enceladus, although the latter may have been Dione instead.

Next up I set out to find M44, the Beehive Cluster. I had tried to find this one a couple of times but wasn't successful until last night. M44 is in Cancer and is about midway between Gemini and Leo. I knew it was just up and to the right of the middle star in Cancer (Asellus Australis) but before last night I was confused and was looking at the star Procyon instead. (woops!).

So, last night I was able to correctly determine where Cancer was, even though I could only barely see any of its stars with the naked eye. Once I found Asellus Australis finding M44 was easy. It REALLY stood out. The sky all around M44 was pretty devoid of anything interesting, but I was slowly swinging the scope around and, pow, all of a sudden dozens and dozens of stars were visible at 50x using the Ethos. It was very beautiful and took up the entire field of view in the eyepiece. I really need a lower power, wider field eyepiece to really appreciate clusters like this a bit more.

Finally last night I remembered that one of the stars in Leo was a binary system. Algieba, which is one of the central stars in Leo's sickle (2 stars above Regulus, which is at the base of the sickle.)

I had tried to view this binary once before (late on a winter night) but it didn't work out (either due to my inexperience or impatience brought about by the cold). Last night, though, at 140x I was able to clearly resolve the binary pair. Algieba (also known as Gamma Leonis) is about 100 light years away and each of the pair is about double the mass of the sun. I found this picture of Algieba at this site. The view I saw of it looked just like that, although reversed.

This was encouraging because I haven't been sure how well the 120ST would do on binary stars.

All in all it was a good evening of star gazing.