Another great post by Joe Hanson (It's Okay To Be Smart)

http://www.itsokaytobesmart.com/post/64309813908/william-blake-auguries-of-innocence-gif

Jupiter - Moon Rendezvous (live webcast 2100 EST)

Link to the webcast: 

http://events.slooh.com/

From the SLOOH Space Camera website -

"Bright planet Jupiter will be to the left of a spectacular Waxing Gibbous Moon - closest conjunction until 2026 for North America. "

From Space.com - 

"Jupiter and the moon will appear just a finger-width apart tonight (Jan. 21) for stargazers across North America. In South America, some observers may even see Jupiter slip behind the moon in an amazing occultation. The extreme close encounter between the planet and moon is a must-see, even if clouds block your view."

Jupiter - 29th December viewing

We finally received the filter and eyepiece kit and attempted another viewing of Jupiter. The orange and yellow filters enhanced details of the Jovian belts and general atmospheric structure, while the extra eyepieces provided some much needed magnification options.

Unfortunately, without the SLR kit (still waiting on it) we couldn't attempt any real astrophotography. Relegated to using the Samsung S3's camera again, the 25mm Plossol coupled with a 2x Barlow, and a Moon filter (the orange and yellow filters didn't seem to agree with the cellphone camera) managed to provide us a reasonable picture of Jupiter (below). 

Equipment list: Celestron NexStar 6SE - (25mm Plossl eyepiece & 2x Barlow) // Imaging - Samsung Galaxy S3

Who: Ayushi/Rajat/Kashif
 
When: 20:59 hrs, 29th Dec, 2012 

Post-Christmas day observations

As an update to yesterday's post we'd like to share our photos from today's attempt at capturing the Moon and Jupiter. In addition, we managed to catch a speck of light known as Aldebaran, a rather bright red giant star some 65 light years (that's 614.9 million million kilometres) from us.

Beginning with the Moon again - 

                                                    

Today's observation of Jupiter and its moons displays the three closest moons forming a skewed triangle  of sorts. Callisto, the fourth and farthest Galilean moon can be seen as a faint dot away from the trio. 

Jupiter + 4 Galilean moons

The diagram below (screen capture from Sky & Telescope's handy Jupiter applet) indicates the predicted position of the Galilean moons with respect to the giant planet. As before the letters denote each moon's name:

I = Io, E = Europa, G = Ganymede, C = Callisto 

 Our final image of the day was a capture of Aldebaran (from the Arabic, Al-debaran, 'the follower').

Aldebaran (Red giant star)

Since we were unable to capture a wide angle image of our objects of interest, we've included a screen shot from Stellarium (a free to download interactive planetarium) illustrating the relative positions of all three objects. 

Equipment list: Celestron NexStar 6SE - Stock setup (25mm Plossl eyepiece and a wonky StarFinder) // Imaging - Samsung Galaxy S3

Who: Ayushi/Rajat/Kashif

When: 1800 hrs, 26th Dec, 2012 

Christmas astronomy - The Moon & Jupiter

Most people around the world were treated to a great view of a waxing moon paired with Jupiter this Christmas night. The astronomical event presented itself to be the best way to start using our newly acquired telescope!

The Moon was spectacular offering plenty of detail (although at this stage of it's cycle it's increased brightness reduces contrast), and Jupiter was clearly visible with it's majestic bands and four Galilean moons - Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto - And since none of us had seen Jupiter through a telescope before, we were all rather chuffed. 

Although we'd not yet received our astrophotography kit, we shivered through the sub-zero temperatures (a crisp -20 deg C)  here in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to grab a few shots through the eyepiece with our cellphone cameras. Granted the images are really low-quality, we're happy we got anything at all on our very first astronomy outing!

Beginning with the Moon - 

Using a cellphone camera our shot of Jupiter and its four Galilean moons couldn't obviously produce the detail we observed through the eyepiece. The image below is untouched and includes distortion due to the eyepiece barrel and the fact that we were trying to keep a cellphone centered at -25 degrees Celcius.

Attempting to clean up and re-size our original image gave us something a tad clearer (below).

Both the observed and captured image above were 'mirror reversed' since our telescope is a Schmidt-Cassegrain design. A comparison between a 'direct' view versus the captured view is shown below. The rendering is a screen capture from Sky & Telescopes' Jupiter's Moons applet available here. 

Note: E = Europa, I = Io, G = Ganymede, C = Callisto

From Sky & Telescope (SCT mirrored)

From Sky & Telescope (Direct view)

Equipment list: Celestron NexStar 6SE - Stock setup (25mm Plossl eyepiece and a wonky StarFinder) // Imaging - Samsung Galaxy S3

Who: Ayushi/Rajat/Kashif

When: 1830 hrs, 25th Dec, 2012

Merry Christmas!