moonwatcher

there's a nice picture in philip's solar system observer's guide 2005 by peter grego on page 149 it details uranus & 3 of its moons (i think) using a 6" refractor at x188. the picture is about 63mm or 2 1/5" square and uranus 4mm or 1/8" wide and is green. now this is a picture so it will show colour but as you mentioned lack of colour I was wondering whether the dob vs refractor is any thing to consider??? ie no-colour with mirrors vs colour with refractors??? i don't have exp.with mirrors so don't know much about them...but i would guess that it is a very faint kind of green and maybe just looks white maybe??? try some filters, ask around for advice about the diff's between Mirros vs Refractor and get back to me please...i was thinking of uping my 4" refractor to a 6" after seeing that picture i mentioned...also planning to make my own 8" dob/newt at my astro club...

your 8" should be fine, I'm 4" at the mo, but uranus is visable with the naked eye on perfect nights with a 5-6mag seeing...so you should see it as a faint star-like thing that is greenish (so the books say) even with 10x50 bins.

hey Isabelle no offence meant - just wanted to know what you were looking at...it could have been something really cool...star hopping aint easy I hope you dont use that 12" for that, a set of 10*50 binoculars are great to map out the sky to help familiarise yourself with the night sky...i notice you have a smaller scope too...have you ever set up the two together using the smaller one as a kind of star finder - you get to view the night sky at different aspects of mag/fov etc, may be easy than the finder scope on the 12" alone...just a suggestion not a criticism...

nice blog. keep it up...err isn't m31 & m32 in the andromeda constellation? and not " ... deep within the Great Square of Pegasus."??? what were you looking at ???

yep