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2 Jan 2023 - Uranus - Observing Report


Honcho41

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This is my first ever observing report but it’s something I want to do a bit more of.  I’ve had plenty of eyepiece time on Jupiter, Saturn and Mars over the years, but I’ve never been certain that I’ve actually seen Uranus yet.  I was hoping to use the occultation with the Moon last night to finally lay my eyes on it but complete cloud cover here in Northumberland scuppered those plans. Early evening tonight came with crystal clear skies so I thought I would give it go, hoping that the Moon would still be close enough to use as a guide.

After checking Stellaruim, at about 17:00, I got set up in the back garden under perfect Bortle 4 skies with my Skywatcher 707AZ, a 25mm eyepiece, and my Adasion 12x42 binos.

Stellarium showed me that Uranus would be about the same distance on the West of the Moon as Mars is to the East.  Should be an easy find I thought.  I used the binos to have a quick look at Mars to try to get an idea of how far across the sky I need to look from the Moon.  I was briefly distracted by the Pleiades, which look amazing through these binos.  I couldn’t really get a fix on where I thought Uranus should be so I went back to Stellarium to get an idea of what it should look like through my scope - see attached.

Starting at the Moon and working West, I stumbled on the bright blue star to the bottom of this image first and thought it might be my target.  Luckily, the little triangle of stars in the image were visible in my scope and pointed me straight to Uranus.  It didn’t really look like a disc through this 25mm lens so I added a Barlow Lens to see if I could get in closer.  Unfortunately my tripod is not the most stable of fixings and that level of zoom combined with my heavy-handed tuning of the elevation and azimuth made it impossible to settle, so I went back to the 25mm and enjoyed the view for a while.

Although the disc was difficult to differentiate from the background stars, it was easy to make out the expected blue-ish colour of the planet and the little right-angled triangle of stars in the Stellarium image were obvious through my scope and gave me the confidence to say that finally, I have seen Uranus.

 

20230102-1715-Uranus.png

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Nice report, enjoyed reading it. There is a sense of achievement in finding both Uranus and Neptune.

I know what you mean by "perfect Bortle 4 skies.."

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Well done!

Uranus and Neptune are easier than a lot of people think. They are a great reward after a bit of star hopping. Maybe that's what puts some people off; trying to track down a star like object by star hopping. But that is one of the great pleasures of visual astronomy. 

Honing that skill with limited equipment makes it all the more rewarding! 

Uranus and Neptune are both unexciting targets for imagers, save the detection of faint moons. So all the more reason to get the scope on them.

I recon I've seen both through binoculars many more times than a telescope but certainly more rewarding to make out the disc through a scope.

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48 minutes ago, rl said:

I know what you mean by "perfect Bortle 4 skies.."

Yep, the skies up here just pop, I can stand under it for hours.

 

21 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Well done!

Thank you, I'm glad I put the effort in, but I really want a go-to mount now!

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Well done. Good to hear you are able to do some observing around your masters degree.

I always check both Uranus and Neptune out, assuming they are visible, just to keep my 'planetary targets spotted list' looking respectable'

The recent weeks and months have been excellent and nearly all of our solar system neighbours have been well placed for observation.

Uranus itself is in an ideal location, and is an obvious disk to me through my scope, that has a washed out pale greeny grey colour.

Neptune is a tougher one to ID convincingly at times as its so small, but with decent conditions is similar to Uranus (a bit more blue) only quite a lot fainter.

Some guys on here, with big scopes, better sky's and better eyes than me report they can detect Uranus' 4 faint moons, and also Neptunes big moon, Triton, but I myself have never come close to bagging them.

Regarding observing, i must confess i cheat and am a bit lazy : i have Bortle 7 sky's here, so use a DSC computer on my alt-az to easily find stuff,  but get out to a couple of darker sites when i can which are  a Bortle 4/5.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Honcho41 said:

Thank you, I'm glad I put the effort in, but I really want a go-to mount now!

No! Don't do it! 😯

It's the start of the slippery slope 🤣

But seriously, GoTo opens your horizons greatly. Just be sure to get the best mount you can afford. The best telescope that money can buy would be wasted on a poor mount. A good mount can make even a modest scope very usable.

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Nice report @Honcho41, always good to catch these outer planets even though they are fairly underwhelming at the eyepiece. I did just about manage to catch Uranus as it passed close by the Moon the other night (I was too far south for an occultation).

One thing I notice is that, even if you don’t discern a disk, I find that both Uranus and Neptune stand out from other stars in some way ie whenever they are in the field of view my eye is drawn to them. Perhaps because they don’t twinkle unlike stars.

Keep up the observing, and as others say, goto isn’t essential, but a good solid mount really helps.

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16 hours ago, Honcho41 said:

This is my first ever observing report but it’s something I want to do a bit more of.  I’ve had plenty of eyepiece time on Jupiter, Saturn and Mars over the years, but I’ve never been certain that I’ve actually seen Uranus yet.  I was hoping to use the occultation with the Moon last night to finally lay my eyes on it but complete cloud cover here in Northumberland scuppered those plans. Early evening tonight came with crystal clear skies so I thought I would give it go, hoping that the Moon would still be close enough to use as a guide.

 

After checking Stellaruim, at about 17:00, I got set up in the back garden under perfect Bortle 4 skies with my Skywatcher 707AZ, a 25mm eyepiece, and my Adasion 12x42 binos.

 

Stellarium showed me that Uranus would be about the same distance on the West of the Moon as Mars is to the East.  Should be an easy find I thought.  I used the binos to have a quick look at Mars to try to get an idea of how far across the sky I need to look from the Moon.  I was briefly distracted by the Pleiades, which look amazing through these binos.  I couldn’t really get a fix on where I thought Uranus should be so I went back to Stellarium to get an idea of what it should look like through my scope - see attached.

 

Starting at the Moon and working West, I stumbled on the bright blue star to the bottom of this image first and thought it might be my target.  Luckily, the little triangle of stars in the image were visible in my scope and pointed me straight to Uranus.  It didn’t really look like a disc through this 25mm lens so I added a Barlow Lens to see if I could get in closer.  Unfortunately my tripod is not the most stable of fixings and that level of zoom combined with my heavy-handed tuning of the elevation and azimuth made it impossible to settle, so I went back to the 25mm and enjoyed the view for a while.

 

Although the disc was difficult to differentiate from the background stars, it was easy to make out the expected blue-ish colour of the planet and the little right-angled triangle of stars in the Stellarium image were obvious through my scope and gave me the confidence to say that finally, I have seen Uranus.

 

 

20230102-1715-Uranus.png

Great report, thanks! I really enjoyed reading it. I really related to your struggles finding Uranus, as I have struggled too. I will keep trying, and will take inspiration from your endeavours! Thanks! 

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Nice report and well done on seeing it. Try on when the moon is not up and it will be a lot easier to get to and see it's bluish colour. Neptune as others said is not too bad to find and it looks very similar to Uranus but smaller. It also looks a bit more of a 'fuzzy' disk compared to the surrounding stars. I struggled to get it with the moon out at the beginning as star hoping was a bit tricky.

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