Discovered a new star last night

[blueroom]

I managed to get a quick look at Jupiter last night but then I noticed a bright star to the north of Jupiter. So I pointed my scope to it and found a beautiful perfect round star, I spent ages looking at it.

Eager to find out what this star is called I got my ipad and held it up to the heavens, the star is called Capella and its about 42 light away!!

Another star I would love to look at is Sirius but its always too low in the sky for me to see (my garden hedge is in the way lol). Will it rise higher in the sky later in the year?

This is why I love astronomy! I'm a total beginner and I'm learning all the time, stuff like this just blows my mind

[ronin]

Capella is the main star of Auriga, you will normally see a lot of colour from it as the light passes through the atmosphere because it is a close double star and the 2 stars are similar but slightly different in colour temperatures so the dancing colours are actually the refraction of light from 2 slightly different coloured stars.

[moogoomonkey]

Capella is my favourite star! It was the first one I identified myself

[DeepThought]

I was most impressed with Arcturus last night, it was twinkling between white blue and red (and by red I mean properly red) and was a beautiful sight to the naked eye.

Took the edge off the disappointment of my failed asteroid hunt anyway.

[Tinker1947]

Download Stellarium set your location, then advance the time maybe a week at a time, this will show how the Stars move from your viewpoint, Sirius is one of those that stays quiet low but there are many more that will move from the East to West going ringt overhead, Arcturus is rising in the early evening and can't be missed.......

[yesteryeargames]

I don't seem to get any colours with my 8dob skyliner 200p? Can anyone reccomebd a really colourful star to test later on.

[JamesF]

A trick that was mentioned on Stargazing LIve for seeing star colour better is to defocus the star slightly. The colour then becomes more obvious. The demos they had made it appear so though I've had little chance to try it out myself since.

James

[DeepThought]

I don't seem to get any colours with my 8dob skyliner 200p? Can anyone reccomebd a really colourful star to test later on.

Red giants are quite distinctive, Betelgeuse or Aldebaran spring to mind.

A double star like Albireo will show brilliant colour contrast but it doesn't rise until very late at the moment.

The double cluster has a good spread of colours too.