View RSS Feed

Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

I Found Round Thing

Rate this Entry
2 Comments
by
Bluebiird
, 04-01-2013 at 10:33 PM (1773 Views)
I should probably blog about seeing me family yesterday, before I forget anything important but I don't want to write a long blog like that. Instead I want to write about the round thing I found.

I say round thing because I'm not an expert. I barely count as an amateur. I wasn't planning to stargaze tonight. I don't have enough space in my room to keep the telescope set up all the time and I don't want it to get dusty. I don't want to take it outside either. It wouldn't be as simple and romanticized as it is on TV and I'm wary of the sorts of people you meet in parks at night. There isn't really the room for the box in my room either so it's quite a hassle to get it out, set up and focussed on something. But I'm getting quicker at it so that's good.

I noticed it was a clear night when I took the dog out. It was a bit later than the time I usually saw Orion, haven't seen it for a while now and I hear that some constellations are easier to see at different times. I'm fine with that. Now I'm seeing something that I think is one of the bears. I was thinking Ursa Minor but the shape doesn't look the same as the picture card I have. It looks more like it's Ursa Major. I don't mind. I don't have anything against either of the bears.

So when I got back I decided to have a look out of my window. It wasn't so bright looking in that direction but I did set up the telescope again and focus on a bright thing above the house opposite my window. I focussed on it pretty quickly and was quite amazed. It looked rounder than the red star I found last night. I wondered if it might be a planet.

It's hard to get a really crisp look at everything because I'm looking through a double glazed window that's still pretty dirty and I can't take my glasses of. In the instructions it says that you can use glasses or not, whichever you're most comfortable with but if you have astigmatism you should wear your corrective lenses. Not sure if they mean acute astigmatism that special contacts can be worn for or whether they mean any degree of astigmatism where glasses can be worn too.

I have slight astigmatism now which my glasses correct for. I actually like it. I can press my glasses flat on the eyepiece to get a good view but if I try it without my glasses I go in too close and my eyelashes brush on the eyepiece, which is very uncomfortable. So my focus can be restricted by my glasses, although it does seem sharper with the glasses so it's fine.

The thing I saw looked a little reddish but somehow not the same as the star yesterday. If I had to describe it in one word I'd say it was smoother, a smoother red, if that makes any sense. And the edges seemed more refined, which makes me thing it might have been a planet. A star is a ball of fire so it wouldn't be perfectly circular but a planet is round so it would have more defined edges. What excited me most about it was that it had 3 tiny white dots nearby, extremely close. I wondered if they might be moons. But I shouldn't get too excited. They could have just been sweet ordinary stars that were nowhere near the round thing and just looked like it from this perspective.

I called mum all excited though. This time she did respond, after a while and finally came up. I didn't lose track of this one she got to see it too. I was so happy. I tried to get a better focus on it with a different lens that I haven't quite got the hang of yet but I couldn't get it to focus. I think I need to play around with it a bit more. So I decided to take it off and just enjoy looking at the round thing as I had before for a while. Unfortunately I couldn't focus on it again and it took me a while to work out why. It had moved. After a while it was obscured by the house opposite.

I should have expected this really. The earth moves. And if the item were indeed a planet it would be moving to some degree too and with the time it takes for the light of the thing to reach us of course it wouldn't stay in the same place the whole time.

I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't get to look at it for longer. Just being able to see it so clearly, at least compared to how I saw it with the naked eye, is just so extraordinary and very humbling. I'm rather looking forward to tomorrow to see if it's a clear night again and to see if I can find it again. Even if I can't there are so many interesting things out there that I might catch a glimpse of that I don't mind if I don't see it again. We'll see how things go.

From now on you can call me Bluebiird the Star Hunter....Or maybe not.

Bluebiird out.

I wonder if there will be a lot of these "I found something in the sky" blogs. We'll see.
Oh and thank you for wishing me happy birthdays.

Updated 04-01-2013 at 11:06 PM by Bluebiird

Categories
Uncategorized

Comments

  1. TheFifthElement's Avatar
    Actually right now is a really great time to be looking at Jupiter as it is very visible in the night sky. Jupiter is appearing in the West; probably the best way to find it is to follow the path that the three stars that make up Orion's belt make towards the right and you'll see a very very bright object in the sky, bigger than any of the other stars. That is Jupiter. If you look at it through your telescope, depending on the apeture size and magnification, you may be able to discern some colour, perhaps the red spot, but more likely you will be able to just faintly make out its moons. It is very beautiful. Based on your description, I think it is highly likely that you have spotted Jupiter. There is something quite astonishing about seeing a planet with your own eyes. Apparently Saturn may be visible right now too, though it is quite low on the horizon. Saturn is very obviously a planet because when you view it through a telescope you can see its rings.

    I find this website handy for information about viewable planets: http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essent...saturn-mercury

    Also, there is an easy way to determine if the object you are seeing is a planet or a star without even using a telescope. The clue is in the old nursery rhyme twinkle twinkle little star - the stars 'twinkle' but planets do not. This is because the light from the planets is coming a much shorter distance, so is less affected by the aberration caused by the Earth's atmosphere. So if you look at the moon the light is very bright and clear, planets are generally quite bright and clear (and Mars has a noticeably red hue, though is not visible at the moment), and stars are twinkly.

    Orion is generally visible during Autumn - winter - spring time but in summer is not visible (northern hemisphere) as it becomes a 'daytime' constellation. Just below Orion's belt there is a nebula which can be seen as a kind of smudge with the naked eye, but would be wonderful to take a look at through your telescope. In the northern hemisphere Ursa Major (the Great Bear / the Plough) is always visible and once you've spotted it you can't miss it. Casseopia is also very easy to spot, as it is shaped very like a letter 'W'. You might benefit from buying a cheap planisphere which helps you to get an understanding of the constellations which are viewable dependent upon the time of year. I have one something like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Plan...ref=pd_sim_b_5 though I got mine from an astronomy supplies shop rather than the dreaded Amazon.
  2. Bluebiird's Avatar
    I actually have a little update on "the round thing". I had a look out of my window about 2 hours earlier yesterday when it was higher in the sky. It looked a little whiter than before but this time I could see 4 dots instead of 3. According to my deck of flash cards Jupiter has 63+ moons and since it's so huge "the thing" being Jupiter makes a lot of sense. I can't zoom in enough to see any distinct features but I'm happy just to see it at all. To be honest I have wondered now and then whether other planets actually existed, having never been able to confirm that I've seen one myself. Kind of like the tooth fairy really. People tell you it exists but you can't prove it and then you find out the secret and you feel silly for believing it. I've only ever seen other planets in pictures or on TV and those aren't always accurate. I hear that pictures of mars are made a little redder than they actually are and that Pluto has never actually been photographed in any great detail so I began to wonder if the rest of space actually existed. Also I mentioned earlier that until recently I'd never been able to recognise a constellation so I couldn't be sure they existed. It's just very pleasing to confirm these things with my own eyes .