Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The search for Neptune

Last night I started the search for planet 8.

On Jan 12 Neptune and Venus are going to be in very close proximity, hopefully visible in the same eyepiece.
So last night I decided to take advantage of a nice evening to drag Dobby out to the back yard and check out Venus, Mars and then see if I could pick out Neptune in the sky between.
Unfortunately, the transparency was not great. It is low on the horizon, so there is a lot of bad air, plus there was a big grass fire during the day which didn't help either. Therefore, I'm unable to report with any certainty that I spotted it. I did see a number of objects, including a faint one that may have had a faint bluish hue. I'll try again tonight to spot Neptune before the big moment on Thursday.
I also took a couple of pictures of Venus and Mars. The Venus one is using the yellow filter on the EP, but has still flared out a bit. You can still see the half lit phase of the planet. The photo of Mars is a fairly accurate representation of the size and lack of detail visible.


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