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Anyone caught a glimpse of Neptune this year?

gitchnz

By gitchnz
in Observing - Planetary

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Scooot

Scooot

Posted
Posted

I looked at Neptune tonight for the first time this year, it had just about moved to a gap between my neighbours conifers that had been obscuring my line of sigh most previous nights. I was looking at 120x, I could just see it was a disc and planet but it was very small. I couldn't detect any colour perhaps a hint that it was different but it was a bit murky being so low.

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Uplooker

Uplooker

Posted
Posted

Well done Richard & Phil,

From what you have posted you had similar views and issues as I did. I am going to give it yet another go. I did try for it on Saturday night as the sky was really clear and the seeing was pretty good. I didn't manage to get it though as i only went out quite late and by then it was obscured by the neighbours house.

Ian

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Scooot

Scooot

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Posted

Well done Richard & Phil,

From what you have posted you had similar views and issues as I did. I am going to give it yet another go. I did try for it on Saturday night as the sky was really clear and the seeing was pretty good. I didn't manage to get it though as i only went out quite late and by then it was obscured by the neighbours house.

Ian

I only found it Ian because I was using my Nexus push to system. I don't think I would have found it without it, its barely larger than a star, and in the poor visibility low down the stars aren't as sharp as they should be. Once you're in the right area you can tell its a planet. I did check the surrounding star fields to make sure, but I think anyone who finds it by just star hopping has done very well indeed.

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Phil Fargaze

Phil Fargaze

Posted
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I used to the Goto as well. Although to confirm what I could see I used a planetarium programme to check the star field. There were two stars which were very much like a wide double and I used them to help recognise the view. 

I did glimpse Uranus last night too in preparation for it`s upcoming opposition. That was difficult too, but understandable considering the low elevation.

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Ouroboros

Ouroboros

Posted
Posted

I found Neptune a couple of weeks ago by star hopping and looking at Sky Safari.

I looked at it for the first time through my telescope the night before last. I used GOTO and confirmed position looking as Sky Safari. I guess it was sort of bluish and maybe slightly disk -like of highest mag I have of 200.

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Paul73

Paul73

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Posted

I tried finding it last night with the C8 on AZ4 but gave up after 2 hours, going to give it another go tomorrow night as it showing clear again.

Here is how I got there last night. If you have relatively dark sky, you can catch it (just) in 10x50 bins which makes the scope star hop a whole heap easier.

Find the bright four stars in a wiggly line at the top of Aquarius. Get them in your finder. Drop down to the next similarly bright star. If I can see a star directly to the left (9 o'clock), then I have Theta Aquarius and I need to head SW to the next bright star, Sigma Aquarius (no star to the left means that I'm there already)!

Get Sigma into the bottom left of a 0.7° eyepiece (top right in my Newtonian using 12mm Delos). Neptune is the brightest star in the top right of the field (bottom left in my Newtonian)

It is the one that looks different from the other stars.

Good luck.

Paul

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Special K

Special K

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Tricky little devil as it's so hard to tell from other stars; I had to check and recheck it all out last night.   North of Sigma is a horseshoe of stars and Neptune is sneaking between them back toward the West.  The seeing was off despite some good transparency, though the kids got a look in which was nice.  When asked what color it might look like, my daughter said <after a long pause> it might be blue a little bit....think she might have been saying that just to make me happy!  If it was blue looking last night, it was the palest blue on the artist's palette. 

Great to find it again, though!  It seems to be a challenge every time.

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John

John

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I've been observing Neptune this evening. Despite the "moonglow" and it's relatively low altitude Neptune is just visible in my 50mm RACI finder as a faint pin point of light. It's showing a clear disk at 200x or more and is still quite crisp 454x. This is with my 12" dob. The nearby Moon does not help picking out a tone but I'd say pale blue would sum up the planets colour this evening. My eye suggests that the limbs and poles are darker in tone which gives it a slightly 3D ball-like appearence but that may be my mind playing tricks on me !

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Mark at Beaufort

Mark at Beaufort

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Because the Moon was so bright last night I decided to view Uranus and Neptune. I set up the 180mm Mak/Cass on the SkyTee mount and used my 80mm f5 Achro with 24mm 68 degree EP as the finder scope on the other side.

I printed out star maps from Stellarium and used my Vixen SG2.1x42 mini binos to find the main pointer stars.

I thought that Neptune would be the more difficult so started with this planet. Finding Sigma Aquarius was quite easy and drawing a line from star 58 through Sigma you could see Neptune. I used my Pentax 6.5-19.8 zoom giving me a mag of 138x to 415x. Neptune showed a good disc and a faint blue colour. Could not detect any Moons.

Over to Uranus finding Delta and Eta Pisces as my guide stars. Again the star chart produced in Stellarium made it easily to find Uranus in the 80mm frac. The Pentax zoom showed a much larger disc and in my eyes Uranus was pale green.

Ended the night viewing the Moon with the binoviewers in the Mak/Cass - wonderful 3D image.

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SteveB72

SteveB72

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I managed to find Neptune last Saturday night there was a lot of glow from the moon but managed to resolve a disc and got to 7mm EP which is 257x with my 16" Dob. I want to try and observe triton once the moon has moved away.

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Phil Fargaze

Phil Fargaze

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You should get it with your kit. Have a crack at Uranus for moons as well. You should get 3 or 4!

Paul

I was wondering what would be a reliable source of information regarding the moon positions at a given date and time. I noticed that in Astronomy Now there is a diagram showing the moon positions on opposition night but it didn't tally up with my planetarium programme

(Redshift 5) .

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Scooot

Scooot

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I was wondering what would be a reliable source of information regarding the moon positions at a given date and time. I noticed that in Astronomy Now there is a diagram showing the moon positions on opposition night but it didn't tally up with my planetarium programme

(Redshift 5) .

Sky Safari pro has them, I think plus has as well. You can alter the time forward and back as you wish. In Pro you can display just the main moons or all the minor ones as well, also their orbits.

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Phil Fargaze

Phil Fargaze

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Sky Safari pro has them, I think plus has as well. You can alter the time forward and back as you wish. In Pro you can display just the main moons or all the minor ones as well, also their orbits.

Sounds good but I didn't fancy having to download things or purchase apps, I was hoping for an online solution.

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Walshie79

Walshie79

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Got Neptune in the binoculars just now- surprisingly easy to see considering the moon and it's fairly low altitude. The trouble is finding Aquarius to start with! Could just make out the steering wheel and just aimed at a point below that till I found Sigma (with 58 Aqr nearby and that little crescent shaped asterism just above). Neptune is really obvious NW of Sigma and S of the crescent, even at 8th mag it's still brighter than anything in the immediate surroundings.

Uranus found too, though had to work from Pegasus as really hard to make out Pisces with that moon.

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