Where's Uranus?

[blusky]

Extremely pleased with the lunar and Jupiter views before the thick cloud pulled in just after 9pm (if anything need a stronger filter for the former).

Could not locate Uranus though! Any tips? At 5.8 and 3.6" should have been distinguishable from a star even in a bright moonlight, no?

[pvaz]

For this situations I use cartes du ciel, place a telrad sight on it and print the map. In the scope it should look like a small disk at around 100x.

[JohnnyD333]

I would use Stellarium, find out where it will be when you go outside, and look for some bright stars you can recognize that will be near it. As Paulo stated, star charting will help as well. But even with your 200P, be prepared for a small blue/green dot in your best EP, its so far away I can only get moons with long exposure imaging. It is still a great moment when you find it, even if you are spoiled by Jupiter and Saturn:)

[JonnyP]

I went out prepared to find Uranus the other night, but it is in exactly the direction where I have most LP, so no joy!

[The Bat]

Not very easy to track down, although I have viewed it several times in the past few weeks. I plotted it on a good star chart and used that. I got the co-ordinates from Stellarium.

I start at the circlet of Pisces and then go east a bit until I am almost in line with Alpheratz and Algenib. There isn't much easily recognisable stuff in the area to help and the stars I use to find the way are hard to pick out if there's too much LP. Even though I know roughly where it is now, I still often have trouble remembering which point of light it is through the finderscope.

For me, it's distinctly non-stellar at 63x, but I usually push the magnification up to 135x at least to see a fuzzy greenish disk.

Rachel

[cantab]

I actually found it in my 10x50s on only my second day out, in October. (Though I missed it when I first tried, and had to come back for it later in the evening). I'd say you're in luck in terms of star hopping there at the moment. Attached is the route I followed from the circlet in Pisces. The optical double I mention is pretty wide and should be reasonably apparent in binoculars or a finder.

[Per167]

Sky & Telescope has a good finder chart published on their website here.

I found it quite easy to star hop using this chart and a 5" Newtonian under medium-high suburbian light pollution (and I'm fairly new to this hobby).

[magic612]

Here is a chart I made for

when the Moon was nearby, but it should suffice even now. Look for the circlet of Pisces' head, if possible, depending on light pollution. There is a 6.3 magnitude star just below Uranus, and a near-parallelogram of 7th magnitude stars in the same binocular or finderscope view. (Start around 2:00 in the video.)

Alternatively, you can star-hop from the circlet in Pisces directly there. I find that writing down the brighter star magnitudes on a chart of a star hop along the way to an object helps me find things more easily. Good luck!

[blusky]

Found it! Took a good half hour, and only after having the laptop next to me - the paper chart was useless on this occasion. A fuzzy dim ball at exactly 200x (with a Barlow), perhaps can be described as bluish...

PS Even better view of Jupiter tonight - the thin southern band is seen clearly.

[blusky]

Here is a chart I made for

when the Moon was nearby, but it should suffice even now. Look for the circlet of Pisces' head, if possible, depending on light pollution. There is a 6.3 magnitude star just below Uranus, and a near-parallelogram of 7th magnitude stars in the same binocular or finderscope view. (Start around 2:00 in the video.)

Thanks, can't access the pdf though. The bright Moon+LP meant I could barely see the Pisces lambda (nearest to the planet). 3 more hops and voila!

PS Thanks for your website...

[magic612]

Thanks, can't access the pdf though. The bright Moon+LP meant I could barely see the Pisces lambda (nearest to the planet). 3 more hops and voila!

PS Thanks for your website...

Hmnm... weird, when I tested it while previewing my post, it worked. Now it doesn't work for me either. Huh.

Well, at the moment it is at the bottom of my homepage, here: Eyes On The Sky

In any case, I'm glad you did find it - congrats!