Category: Planets

On the night of December 11 I observed Mars from 20.30 UT until 22.00 UT. I use the 300mm Orion Optics UK on a dobsonian mount. The eyepieces used were the 12mm Nagler and the 7mm Pentax. The seeing was not to good, so I was limited to medium magnifications. Still every now and again there were some fine details visible on the surface of mars. The sketch below should is just a rough impression from what I saw that night. You can see I identified a dark area looking like a large bird. The body of the bird (central part) is Syrtis Major. The wings are Mare Tyrrehnum and Mare Serpentis. I also detected the North Pole and a dark area right above the North Pole, probably Utopia.



It was made with the using the 7mm Pentax XW, giving a magnification of 229x. Of course Mars didn’t look as big as the circle on the paper, but I like to sketch objects on a larger scale. Some of the techniques used for sketching Mars come from the book “Astronomical Sketching” from the Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series, a book which I can highly recommend.

This morning, about 05.30 UT I got up for work. I looked out of the window, and there I saw a great line-up of three of the brightest objects in our night sky, the Moon, Jupiter and Venus. What a way to begin your day as an amateur astronomer! The images below all

Early this morning, about 6 o’ clock UT the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, stood together in the eastern morning sky, a spectacular sight! They looked really impressive through my binoculars. Tomorrow morning Venus will be

The Venus transit was just amazing.  Follow this link to look at some digital images and read a the observing report:

Later this week I hope to be back with more images and some Video footage.

Enjoy!

On May 18th and 19th I took some images of Venus in the western evening sky. Venus is still very bright with a magnitude of -4.0. Through my big binoculars it looked like a small crescent moon. At the moment about 1/10 of the surface is lit by the Sun. Looking through the telescope I realized how big the diameter is at the moment (49.1"). Here are some images I took during .......follow this link to read the full report

Last night around 21.00hrs I observed Mars, Venus and the crescent Moon, standing close together in the western sky. There was a lot of moisture in the air, and the light pollution......follow this link to read the full story

Tonight I observed Jupiter.  The 4 big Moons all could be seen on one side of Jupiter. Even at low magnification I could detect see Jupiter divided into 7 different zones and bands.......follow this link to read the full story

On March 17th 2004 I started my observing session with Saturn about 19.00hrs UT from my own backyard. The seeing was great. It had been 20 degrees Celsius all day and I .....follow this link to read the full story