Lockdown - a day observing the Solar System

[Mark at Beaufort]

Its 6am and yes I have started observing. Venus is very bright and looking towards the horizon I can spot Mercury.

Its now late morning and I have the 6" Newt set up with solar filter + UV/IR filter attached to the eyepiece. The large sunspot AR2781 is really something so its good that we are coming out of solar minimum (hopefully)!!

6.30pm - Heritage 130P out to observe Jupiter and Saturn - The Baader Orthos + Baader Classic barlow works well with this scope.

7pm - 9pm - Zoom talk to Herefordshire Astro Society on Venus and recent research on phosphine in the cloud areas

9pm onwards - 12" Dob which had been set up since late afternoon - started with Mars. The quality of the seeing was excellent. Using the 6mm Ethos gave me so much details and I had the best view of Syrtis Major ever. Also used the 9mm Fujiyama and 10mm Baader Classic Ortho

Next up Neptune - starting to get a bit of fog plus Moon is getting really bright but I tracked down our most distant planet. Used the Fujiyama + Baader Ortho + Baader barlow. 

Finally ended with Uranus - again used the same EPs plus star hopped with the help of the 2x40 Helios binos + 80mm finderscope.

So there we have it all the planets of the solar system in just over 15 hours.

 

[Jiggy 67]

Looks like you had a fantastic day!! 

[vineyard]

Wow, bravo!

[John]

Excellent Mark - very well done

[Mr Spock]

Sounds like a fantastic session 👍

[Nik271]

Wow, what an amazing catch in just a day!  Mercury is a tough one for me, I get to see it just once or twice a year (my horizon is full of trees and houses both east and west). 

[Paz]

Great report, that's a lot of observing. I'm not mentally strong enough or well organised enough to get  up early to observe and miss out on sessions like this as a result!

Edited November 7, 2020 by Paz