Mars and Uranus close pass

[Cyclops]

I don't know if anyone has posted about this already but on the 12th of Feb the two planets appear close together near Andromeda. Hopefully I'll be able to test out the barlow on it when it comes.

Clear skies...

[Pig]

Nice one Cyclops..... definitely worth a look ?

[Cyclops]

I've yet to see Uranus. It remains unticked along with Neptune Pluto and Mercury

[Demonperformer]

Nice one. Sunset is 17:18, and at 18:48 they are just over a degree apart, but continue to get a little closer until after they have set. Should be close enough to each other to try for a photo.

[Stu]

1 hour ago, Demonperformer said:

Nice one. Sunset is 17:18, and at 18:48 they are just over a degree apart, but continue to get a little closer until after they have set. Should be close enough to each other to try for a photo.

Indeed, still at 40 degrees altitude, well worth a look.......if clear of course.

[maw lod qan]

Thanks for the heads up. 

[Stu]

Just caught this tonight in the Tak, quite nice although it appeared basically stellar. I upped the power to x296 to show a dim grey disk.

Through the 24mm I snapped this image which compared exactly with Skysafari

 

[Cyclops]

Very cool! Too cloudy here, what a surprise. Not that I'd be able to make them out with my tiny scope...

[reezeh]

Typical!

I've seen Mercury before in Spring and with Mars past it's best it's fallen off my radar and so I've just missed out on a chance of an easy opportunity to bag Uranus . I guess I'll just have to cheat and connect up the Advanced Astro Master when it comes around again in a few months.

[John]

3 minutes ago, Cyclops said:

Very cool! Too cloudy here, what a surprise. Not that I'd be able to make them out with my tiny scope...

If it was clear, your scope would show them. Mars is a naked eye object and Uranus just needs a 30mm finder scope to be seen. Neptune is within your grasp as well, when you work out where to point the scope and which little dot is which

[reezeh]

2 minutes ago, John said:

If it was clear, your scope would show them. Mars is a naked eye object and Uranus just needs a 30mm finder scope to be seen. Neptune is within your grasp as well, when you work out where to point the scope

Assuming you don't have ridiculous levels of light pollution... Can't star hop where I live and I've looked for Uranus with my finder and 11x50's and gave it up as a bad job... Still... I might have better luck next time and who knows - when they change the street lights around me to those spanking new LED ones, my skies might get darker!

[Gfamily]

2 hours ago, reezeh said:

Typical!

I've seen Mercury before in Spring and with Mars past it's best it's fallen off my radar and so I've just missed out on a chance of an easy opportunity to bag Uranus . I guess I'll just have to cheat and connect up the Advanced Astro Master when it comes around again in a few months.

They're still pretty close together, so if it's clear with you tomorrow, you should be able to make it out.

 

Stellarium will let you work out how to find Uranus while its near Mars - it'll vary somewhat from day to day of course.

[reezeh]

19 hours ago, Gfamily said:

They're still pretty close together, so if it's clear with you tomorrow, you should be able to make it out.

 

Stellarium will let you work out how to find Uranus while its near Mars - it'll vary somewhat from day to day of course.

Thanks, but I've got to get an early night. There's a couple of things getting in the way; having to be up early for work and floodlights over school playing fields in that direction till about half nine, so I can't win.

The lights'll be off Saturday... if it's clear that is.

[Cosmic Geoff]

I saw the near-conjunction last evening (13th) with my 127mm Mak.  Could not get it all in the field of view of my 32mm eyepiece, but the view was as in the Stellarium image from Gfamily above.

[reezeh]

On 13 February 2019 at 00:11, Gfamily said:

They're still pretty close together, so if it's clear with you tomorrow, you should be able to make it out.

 

Stellarium will let you work out how to find Uranus while its near Mars - it'll vary somewhat from day to day of course.

I did dig out my 8x40 binoculars and took a look at the Mars field yesterday evening. What I saw was pretty much what this shows, with Mars, and the brighter stars and  Uranus, even though I couldn't identify Uranus directly at the time as I didnt have this or any chart to hand. What did surprise me was that Mars looked definitely un-starlike in the binoculars.

Before looking at Mars and Uranus I decided to see if my sky was as badly effected by the bright moon and floodlights on the school playing fields as I thought and I easily made out M42 with the distinct notch in it. As I was just having a few minutes' worth of looking I was pretty happy to leave it at that.

With the next week being off work I might get out for an hour or three, weather permitting. I know, full moon...