Neptune (and Triton!)

[Stub Mandrel]

I wasted hours last night getting loads of subs, mostly M31 that all came out very poor because the mist saturated the air with light pollution.

A few plus points - I did get to see M31 with my little 7x20 bins and the Pleiades were nice through the scope, I also discovered that if I use my small scope I can do unguided 2 minute subs no problem, but it vignettes very badly and my flats don't seem to have worked very well and I struggled to focus properly.

I started off, though using the bigger scope and managed to get a few decent subs of Neptune. I could only just make out nearby HIP111910 (HD 1214686), and cold not see Neptune in the grey sky. In the pictures it seems washed out. I used Stellarium and Astrometry.net toi make sure I had it.

I was about to post the pics when I saw someone else's thread about Triton from the night before. Zooming in to my pic andchecking with Stellarium, it turns out I got Triton on the opposite side of the planet. It's also interesting to see that Neptune moves quite a noticeable mount over 24 hours.

I'm well happy now! Time for some more processing, I think!

[xtreemchaos]

great shot mate, i didnt see neptune lastnight but i did the night before so i know what a good catch that is, it was only a small blue speck, well done. thanks for sharing   charl

[Stub Mandrel]

it was only a small blue speck

You're not joking, it's tiny! I wasn't sure which was which until I had the photos. I made the background  blacker and rotated it so it matches the stellarium pic. there's a nice double star half way down as well:

Hmm doesn't want to rotate!

[laudropb]

A very god capture. Spent awhile looking for it the other night, but no success.

[JamesF]

Well done.  I've only really looked for Neptune once and even then I only knew I'd found it because there wasn't a star where I could clearly see something bright

James

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Good catch. I have ony seen Neptune once or twice, and it stood out mainly by its colour. Never imaged it, however

[Stub Mandrel]

I tried again last night, the clarity of the sky and seeing before it went cloudy at 12:00 was some of the best I've had at home. I could see bot M31 and M32 clear as a bell through the 9x finder scope.

The webcam was anon-starter for such a faint object, so I fetched the D10 and fitted it to my x2 barlow for the first time.

My problem was that combined with the reduced FOV I got two stars confused when trying to find Neptune so I took a few dozen subs of a pair of nearby stars, and one shot that might be Neptune, but I'm not 100% convinced. I had worked out it was 3/5 of the way to one star from another pair and went 3/5 of the way to a brighter star a bit further away instead.

The annoying thing is that this morning I set up a scope Stellarium with a focal length that gives 9X with my 25x eyepiece and managed to replicate what I was seeing - if I had done that last night I could have gone straight to it :-(

[Macavity]

I have had the good fortune of seeing Neptune. Having "found" it via GoTo

and video astronomy, I carefully replace the camera with an eyepiece.

Of course, two minutes later, I bumped the setup and...

It is certainly a striking and serene BLUE. But I do see the various

techniques of astrononomy as complimentary...

Or whatever works, basically?

[Stub Mandrel]

I can stare at a photo I've got for ages, but I struggle to keep my eye to the eyepiece for over 30 seconds. Even when star hopping, I have to take breaks on a long 'pan'. Perhaps I should try an eye patch.