Still can't find Neptune of Uranus

[starman1969]

I've been searching pretty hard lately for these two, but they have eluded me so far. I've seen them through professional scopes, but I want to see them through mine.

Is looking with bins any good? I've got some 10x50 & 15x70's.

[John]

They will look just like stars in binoculars. I found I needed 150x to show a disk on Uranus with my 120mm refractor. Neptunes disk is even smaller.

[Ouroboros]

I've seen both Uranus and Neptune with my 16x50 binos.

My approach has been to use Stellarium to work out the position of each planet respectively and then star hop until I'm sure I've pinned them down.

Uranus is blue-ish through my bins. Neptune just looks like a feint star.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I've never looked for them simply because they would be a bit underwhelming. Although a good challange.

[swamp thing]

I've never looked for them simply because they would be a bit underwhelming. Although a good challange.

How do you know until you see them?

[LukeSkywatcher]

How do you know until you see them?

I'm going on reports. Chances are most of us have seen them without realising it.

[swamp thing]

I would still rather see something with my own eyes, than take someone else's word for it.

[Stu]

Uranus was quite clearly a bluish disk at high magnification. I probably did see neptune but could not clearly identify it, need proper star charts.

I guess in binos, they are not going to be easy to identify without charts, and won't look more than stars

Stu

[LukeSkywatcher]

I would still rather see something with my own eyes, than take someone else's word for it.

Agreed.

[Moonshane]

I see Uranus as a greenish disc even at maybe 100x. it recently formed a 'double star' with 44 Pisces it will still be very close.

Neptune is a small pale blue disc and quite a bit smaller. if you get a good star map you'll see them.

this is a good site http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/neptune.htm

as is this http://dcford.org.uk/findercharts.php?obj=neptune&year=2012

[Ouroboros]

Can you see Uranus' moons through an amateur telescope?

[Moonshane]

I saw Titania the other night and with my 16" dob in bad light pollution and a fair amount of mirky high cloud. I am sure that with a 12" in good conditions you'd easily see at least one or two Uranian moons. I hope to get Triton too but not yet had a good try for this.

[LukeSkywatcher]

Can you see Uranus' moons through an amateur telescope?

Define an "amateur scope".

Your scope is 200mm (8")..............im sure you can see the planet in this scope......................the moons i really dont know.

[Capricorn]

Assuming that going to it in one operation isn't successful, set up the 6SE well, goto a star near to where Uranus should be, do the precision alignment (PAE ?) then tell it to goto Uranus. Have something like a 25 or 30mm eyepiece in and look for a funny green/blue star.

The 6SE should have a PAE mode just not sure what it is called if not PAE.

Same for Neptune.

[LukeSkywatcher]

Assuming that going to it in one operation isn't successful, set up the 6SE well, goto a star near to where Uranus should be, do the precision alignment (PAE ?) then tell it to goto Uranus. Have something like a 25 or 30mm eyepiece in and look for a funny green/blue star.

The 6SE should have a PAE mode just not sure what it is called if not PAE.

Same for Neptune.

Thats what i was hitting on earlier. You can find your way to Uranus and Neptune via Go-To or manually, but they will both just look like just another star. Yes the colours will give them away, but they are no Saturn or Jupiter.

[Moonshane]

they are certainly an obvious disc at 150x plus or less and Uranus is quite un-stellar in appearance even at low powers.

[Ouroboros]

Define an "amateur scope".

Your scope is 200mm (8")..............im sure you can see the planet in this scope......................the moons i really dont know.

I have indeed. On the 3 August 2010 it was ~3 degrees from Jupiter so very easy to find without goto.

It was lovely blue and just about a disk.

I didn't think to look for the moons at the time. A photograph I took on the 24 August that year shows no moons, but it was quite a short exposure.

An amateur telescope? How Long is a Chinese runway? I suppose an amateur telescope is one we might reasonably be expected to own.

[Moonshane]

well, I am an amateur and my 16" dob cost a lot less than it should as I bought it used and built much of it myself. a 12" is certainly within the reach (financially at least) of many amateurs.

[Ouroboros]

I saw Titania the other night and with my 16" dob in bad light pollution and a fair amount of mirky high cloud. I am sure that with a 12" in good conditions you'd easily see at least one or two Uranian moons. I hope to get Triton too but not yet had a good try for this.

Maybe. They're about magnitude 14 to 15 which is a bit on the edge visually for a 200p I would have thought.

I'll try and have a look when I get the chance.

[Stu]

Looks like you can, at least when imaging

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php?/topic/163129-Uranus,-Neptune-&-Pluto-+-6-moons#entry1648333

Stu

[matsey]

I've seen both Neptune and Uranus in my 6SE. And, yes they may have been tiny, but both showed signs of colour (Neptune more so than Uranus) and at high mag were obviously disk shaped and not stars. I remember being pretty blown away at the time.

What I found helped was not just using the goto, but also the ocular view in Stellarium. The ocular view (for those who don't already know) will mimic what you should see through your eyepiece. Provided you configure it correctly for your scope and eyepieces, it'll get the orientation and field of view pretty accurately. Then what I do then is study the star patterns round the planet so I can work out which ones are background stars and which one is the planet. Doing it that way I've never failed to find either planet.

Hope that helps, and definitely don't give up, I promise it'll be worth all effort when you do track them down:)

Matsey

[paul schofield]

I managed to find Uranus last week through my 10x50 bins at around 3am, nice clear skies. To me it just looked like a bright blue star, definitely worth the effort of the search. The jury is still out on whether it was Uranus or Neptune I saw, as it was very blue not green. I think through my 200p scope it would only look very slightly bigger. 2mm instead of 1mm.... maybe.

[magic612]

I've been searching pretty hard lately for these two, but they have eluded me so far. I've seen them through professional scopes, but I want to see them through mine.

Is looking with bins any good? I've got some 10x50 & 15x70's.

Yes, they are visible in binoculars, but as others have said, just dots. But it shouldn't be too hard to identify which dot they are. I recently made videos on how to find each of these planets. Neptune is here, and Uranus here. This week I also have the finder charts for each on my site's homepage. I try to walk through finding each one step-by-step, because sometimes finding dimmer objects is challenging. The key is to really look at the patterns of stars and get familiar with them before viewing.

Hope that helps.

[Ouroboros]

Yes, I'd see them with imaging because I quite easily pick up 14 mag galaxies with 30 sec exposures a ISO 1600.

[starman1969]

Yes, they are visible in binoculars, but as others have said, just dots. But it shouldn't be too hard to identify which dot they are. I recently made videos on how to find each of these planets. Neptune is here, and Uranus here. This week I also have the finder charts for each on my site's homepage. I try to walk through finding each one step-by-step, because sometimes finding dimmer objects is challenging. The key is to really look at the patterns of stars and get familiar with them before viewing.

Thanks magic612. I will try that.

Keep up the good work with Eyes on the Sky.