Planet gazing tonight

[Boddie]

Look west just after sunset. The two bright stars in the sky are Venus and Jupiter, they're as close as they ever have been.

[Helen]

Argh...just read this now, can they still be seen later on tonight?

I have a Zeiss 85 scope with 20-60 eyepiece that would do the job just nicely too!

[henrya]

Perhaps not later in the evening, as they may dip below the horizon, but they should be around for a few days just after sunset.

henrya

[Helen]

Marvellous, thanks for the info henrya

[henrya]

Checking on the web suggests you'd better not wait too many days as they will soon be lost in the glare of the sun. Do make sure the sun is set before you point your telescope westwards!

henrya

[Helen]

Originally Posted by henrya

Do make sure the sun is set before you point your telescope westwards!

henrya

Indeed I will! Assuming of course we don't have cloud cover later on.

[Astronut]

Hi You guys,
You can get a look at whats going on in the sky for your part of the world on this site:

http://www.heavens-above.com

there's loads of interesting info there more to do with satellites and stuff, but you can get star maps too.
Mars is getting brighter and rising a little earlier each night at the moment, Helen you may be able to see some detail at 60x during the atmosphere's steadier moments, and there's loads of intersting stuff to see that a spoting scope of that aperture will easily pick up, such as the galaxy M31 in the constellation of Andromeda, and it's two small companion galaxies, M32 and M110. It fills the field of view in my 20x80 binoculars. There's also the 'double cluster' open star cluster pair on the borders of Cassiopea and Perseus, and the Pleiades in Taurus which again fill the field of view at 20x.
All these objects are in the eastern sky late evening, if you want any maps, drop me a PM and I'll be happy to send them over.
I've not found anywhere to post this stuff here as yet.
Saturn is still a late riser but getting earlier. The Moon is now waxing and approaching first quarter. plenty to see in a 80mm spotter scope on the moon, the best detail is to be had on the 'terminator' line, at the edge of the shadow.
I'll be posting some CCD images soon as I'm awaiting arrival of my tracking mount for my 14-inch reflector, then I'll be able to post some varied deep space images (fingers crossed)

[StuartDH]

Thanks for the info Astronut, I've added some of it to the celestial events page at:

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/wi...al-events-2005

If you'd like access to add/edit details on the page then let me know and I'll set up and account for you.

If there's a lot more info that you'd like to add with pictures etc, then we'd be more than happy to construct a new area of the reference section for you to work on.

There are many visitors to the site who are keen to find out more about astronomy and, as yet, we've only got a few pages about buying telescopes and some basic facts and figures etc that we really need to develop.

Cheers

Stuart