four or five planet evening

Clear skies, cold still weather: good seeing.  So, about half past six this evening, we looked for the planetary alignment.  We saw (with the naked eye) faint Mercury close to the still faintly pink horizon, spectacular Venus dominating the western sky, bright Jupiter near the zenith, and red red Mars a little further round.  Binoculars made them brighter, but still point like, except for Venus.  I could convince myself I could see Venus’ phase, but it was so bright, it was hard to be sure.

Later, 8:30-9pm, it was much darker, and we used the big telescope.  Venus and Mercury had set by then.  Jupiter was lower down, but still visible: we could see all four Galilean moons, and some dark bands on the planet itself.  Mars by then had moved close to the zenith.  Last time we tried to view it at that angle, we couldn’t see through the finder, so we bought a 90 degree adapter for it at AstroFest a few weeks ago.  It works!  We got to see the red planet as a disc.  Beautiful.

We had a quick look at the Pleiades, as they were in the vicinity.  My god, it’s full of stars!

We then used the autofinder to try for Uranus.  We could see a bright object near the centre of the field of view.  It could have been a very small disc of a planet, or just a point source of a star.  I choose to believe it was Uranus.

So, definitely four planets, and maybe even five.

Mercury transit overcast Monday

So, would we see the transit of Mercury?

A little after the time of first contact, the sky was quite cloudy, with the sun hiding.

12:58 GMT, looking south

But the clouds were moving quickly, and there were blue patches.  Then around 2pm, the sky started to clear a bit more.

14:05 GMT, looking south west: blue sky!

lining up the telescope (note the existence of shadows)

We attached a solar filter to the front of our telescope, so it was safe to look through it at the sun.  But we had a very careful protocol: lining up using the tracking eyepiece (not looking through it), then carefully covering that unfiltered eyepiece before looking through the main eyepiece.

And we saw the transit!  A very small, very black spot, clear against the sun’s disk.  Amazing.  (No photographs of it this time, though: much poorer weather than previously, and no time to waste.)

Then it clouded over again; we got about 5 minutes viewing in total.

14:20 GMT, cloudy again: goodby Mercury! it was grest seeing you!

Mercury transit glorious Monday

We observed the transit of Mercury today.

Tools included: a Meade ETX125 telescope (with a sun filter!); the blue cardboard Lightline Solar Projector originally bought for observing the 1999 total eclipse; and a Canon EOS 20D SLR camera with a 100-400mm zoom lens (at around the 350mm setting) (and a sun filter!), shown in use.  The water butt and hose pipe were not essential for this project.

Although we (just) saw the transit with the Solar Projector, we got no good photographs that way.  Below are some of the better photographs; the actual viewing with Mark One Eyeball (through the relevant devices) was much more spectacular.  Mercury was obvious a disc, and very black compared to the sunspot.  And there was lots of great structure in the big sunspot, too.  Observing for real is qualitatively different from watching it on TV.

12:29:33 BST.  Unretouched photo, taken using a Galaxy S5 smart phone camera, through the 26mm eyepiece of the telescope (with a sun filter!).  Mercury is the small dot on the far right; the splotch is a sunspot. (The picture is "upside down" because telescope).  This snap worked: all subsequent ones are much too over-exposed and nothing can be seen.

13:04:51 BST.  Digital noise removal, but no other manipulation; photos taken with the SLR camera and 350mm lens, ISO1600, f/5.6, 1/3200sec exposure (through a sun filter!).  Mercury is the small dot on the far left. (The picture is the right way up, because camera).

15:05:31 BST.  Digital noise removal, but no other manipulation; photos taken with the SLR camera and 340mm lens, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/1000sec exposure (through a sun filter!).  Mercury is the small dot on the mid left.

We were very careful with the sun filters on the optics.  However, I think today may be the first time I’ve got sunburnt while observing!

(The page title is a variation of the title of our Venus transit page.)

Venus, Jupiter, Mercury

figure from Scientific American blogs

Tonight sees three planets close together in the western sky: Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury. Our new binoculars got their first outing, and we saw the triple very clearly.  Beautiful.

This also gives us an indication of how good these binoculars are for stargazing: with my small birdwatching 8x42 pair, I could see Venus clearly, Jupiter just, and Mercury not at all. With these new 15x70s I could see all three planets clearly.

just visible in the slightly cloudy western sky; Sun 26 May 2013, 21:51 BST

a four planet evening

A good evening's viewing tonight.  In the east, a brilliant Venus and Jupiter high in the sky (getting closer for the conjunction later this month), and down on the horizon, a much fainter but still clearly visible Mercury.

Then, turning to the west: twinkle, twinkle little Mars, like a ruby against the stars.  We just managed to get a quick look at it through the telescope before the clouds closed in.

Mercury

I've been admiring the brilliant Jupiter in the night sky for the last few months. So I was interested to read on Bad Astronomy that Jupiter would pass close to Mercury in mid-March before disappearing from our skies for a while. I've only (knowingly) seen Mercury once before, in a marvellous four-planet alignment in 2002. Phil Plait mentioned looking on 14 or 15 March, but those nights were cloudy. Last night was clear, however, so I looked out, just after 7pm. I saw a really bright planet, and then another, slightly fainter one down in the twilight, a couple of degrees below it. Aha, I thought, Jupiter, with faint Mercury close to the horizon -- no wonder it's so difficult to see!

But a quick check in the astronomy mags showed I had it backwards. The higher, brighter spot was tiny Mercury, and the lower, fainter one was Jupiter. Given how bright and easily visible Mercury was, I'm sure I've (albeit unknowingly) seen it many times before.

I didn't get to take a photograph, but here's one from Greg Parker that shows almost exactly what I saw (except for the skyline details, of course).