did i find my first planet, jupiter?

[oakwell]

ok used stellarium to find jupiter tonight and i think i did just to the right of the moon. however i am confused as there seemed to be a moon within the image. does jupiter have moons?

[Worzsel]

4 moons

Did you look at it through a scope or binoculars?

[oakwell]

through a scope. it was deff a planet as the shape was there but not much colour to it just found it had a smaller moon within the image. one other thing people have put pictures on here of the planet in colour wihy was it just a whitish colour for me.

[Worzsel]

I don't know the answer to that I'm afraid but well done for finding it, it's exciting isn't it!

[Wbarkingmad]

Its sometimes worth trying a neutral density filter when Jupiter seems very bright. I was out earlier and Jupiter looked superb, the air was relatively still in North Hampshire. Was it my imagination or is the missing cloud band reappearing?

[oakwell]

Its sometimes worth trying a neutral density filter when Jupiter seems very bright. I was out earlier and Jupiter looked superb, the air was relatively still in North Hampshire. Was it my imagination or is the missing cloud band reappearing?

what lense did u use and do u have a link to a filter that i could use for my skywatcher 150p

[Wbarkingmad]

The setup was my skywatcher 200P with a Celestron X-cel 10mm EP and a Baader ND 0.9 neutral density filter. Filter was originally bought for lunar viewing but I tried it when Jupiter was bright enough to make my eye ache and it worked wonders, loads more detail emerged. The filter came from FLO, just go to the filters section on their website.

[Chris H]

Oakwell, what magnification did you use to observe Jupiter?

[oakwell]

Oakwell, what magnification did you use to observe Jupiter?

i started off with 25mm then went to 10. i also played around using a 2x barlow.

[astro_al]

I observed Jupiter for a number of hours last night. I settled on about 160x as the contrast was better than at a higher magnification. Watched Io disappear and reappear from behind Jupiter. Conditions were excellent, I'd say about P9 through my 4" scope by about 2am.

[Chris H]

i started off with 25mm then went to 10. i also played around using a 2x barlow.

I'm not sure what focul length your scope is so I don't know what magnification those ep's will produce but if you got something like x100 or higher you should see Jupiter as an obvious disc with up too four moons strung out to the left or right. Jupiter itself should show atleast the dark northern band (remember the image will be flipped upside down in your scope) if not more. The other night in my 10" scope I could make out 9 different bands. If the image is too bright try increasing the magnification it will dim the image and check your collimation because it needs to be good for revealing planetary detail.

I have tried using my polarizing filter but I didn't like what I saw.

[Revs]

Nice one oakwell

IMO the 25mm that comes with these SW's isn't bad, but the 10 and the barlow are poor. A half decent 5mm EP would be a good improvement for a 150p

EDIT: Oh yeah, I find a light blue filter brings out some nice detail with Jupiter.

[oakwell]

Nice one oakwell

IMO the 25mm that comes with these SW's isn't bad, but the 10 and the barlow are poor. A half decent 5mm EP would be a good improvement for a 150p

EDIT: Oh yeah, I find a light blue filter brings out some nice detail with Jupiter.

thanks can u recomend a new 5mm eyepiece? maybe a link to it?

[Chris H]

What budget do you have?

[oakwell]

depends really dont wanna go nuts but dont wanna spend a bomb maybe a good middle ground?

[Revs]

I've not got much experience with eyepieces with me being pretty new to this, too. But I've seen a few people speak pretty highly of the Celestron X-Cel Series eyepieces-. I've godda admit they have a great spec for the money, and they do a 5mm. Hopefully someone else can confirm this as a good choice.

EDIT: There's also a 6mm William Optics SPL eyepiece for similar money. Don't know which would be best, though

[LukeSkywatcher]

4 moons

Did you look at it through a scope or binoculars?

Jupiter actually has over 60 "moons". Most of them are probably asteroids.