Telescope newb here. What did I see last night in my scope?

[sundogdayze]

Hello all! I just recently was able to afford a telescope, I haven't had one since I was a kid.

I don't know all the technical terms yet, so please bear with me!

I was looking at the moon around 4:00 a.m. EST, and there was a planet to the lower left of the moon I was able to focus on. I first thought it must be Jupiter, but when looking at it through the 25mm + 3x Barlow, it was a full grayish planet without visible rings, but with several moons in a straight diagonal line to the planet. I think I could almost make out shadows of rings on the actual planet, but it could have been a focusing issue too.

Does anyone know if I was actually seeing Jupiter without the rings visible? Were the rings at an angle not visible from my perspective? Or was a seeing another planet (maybe Mercury) with a coincidental line of stars in the background?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[PraedSt]

According to this (http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yoursky), both Jupiter and Neptune were near the Moon at that time.

Plug in the time, your location, etc. I may have guessed them wrong.

If you see rings, I think they're most likely to be Saturn's. Jupiter's are a bit woosy. ;)

Welcome to BAUT.

EDIT: Of course it's unlikely you'll see Saturn's rings now. They're almost edge-on IIRC.

[sundogdayze]

Thanks! I think you may be right about Neptune. I'm going to see if I can find some comparable pics online somewhere to what I was seeing, just to confirm.

I didn't actually see any rings. I saw what looks like shadows of rings on the planet (could have been a focusing thing) and 4 points of light in a straight line diagonal to the planet. I'm pretty new at this, so I don't know if they were moons or just stars aligned in the background.

Thanks for the link, though. That is going to help me so much!

[astromark]

You were seeing Jupiter. What looked a little like a shadow of the rings was not. Saturn is the planet with rings but could not be in your field of view at 4 am. That rings shadow would have been the striped atmosphere of Jupiter. Jupiter's four major moons are often visible even with binoculars... At four am I would think Jupiter would be straight up. Venus is a little brighter and has nil moons., and closer to the eastern horizon. Saturn would have set to your west before midnight. Happy viewing, and WELCOME... mark.

[sundogdayze]

Sorry for the double post, but it looks like it WAS Jupiter I was seeing. Here is a link to a site that shows almost the same image I had in my viewer, labeling it as Jupiter and it's moons.

http://www.compadre.org/informal/index.cfm?Issue=40

Not bad for the first night out since I was about 12! :)

[sundogdayze]

Thanks Astromark! I happened to find an identical image to what I was seeing on another website. It confirmed what you said, and I tried to link the image in another post but it didn't show up.

Still gettin used to the whole forum thing. :)

Thanks again, I'm really happy with what I got to see my first night out since I was a kid!

[Cheap Astronomy]

Hi,

Jupiter seems the likely candidate - the line of moons being a bit of a give away. Not sure why you are expecting rings - which is the key characteristic of Saturn of course. If you are keen download a programme called Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/), tell it where you live and it will show you what's in the sky at any time of day.

You know, someone should develop a website for newbies who aren't ready to invest a lot of money in the hobby, but just want to get a broad feel for what astronomy is all about. Something like 'inexpensive astronomy', 'value-for-money astronomy', umm - dammit, can't get the right word...

[sundogdayze]

Haha, yeah, they should. :whistle:

Anyway, I wasn't so much expecting rings, but I saw the line of moons and thought maybe I was missing something. Also, the stripes on the surface of the planet looked like the shadow of rings. Plus it was about 4 in the morning and I'm really not a morning person lol.

Anyway, thanks for the link, downloading it now.

[Jens]

The thing about Jupiter is that though it does have rings, they are not visible with normal telescopes. They can be seen with Hubble and with some very large earth-based telescopes. but they are definitely not visible with a normal backyard telescope. They were only discovered in 1979.

[sundogdayze]

Yeah, for some reason I was thinking that it was possible for Jupiter to have rings, especially when I saw the stripes I thought were shadows. I don't remember all the things about planets the way I used to, but I am relearning.

[Jeff Root]

Jupiter and Saturn seem to be rather easy to confuse with each other.
I still have to think carefully to keep Neptune and Uranus sorted out.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[m74z00219]

hi there sundogdayze, you should find one of these two programs very helping.

StarryNight is not free, but better at telling you what you saw in the sky from a given location. Celestia takes some practice, but is also very good at telling you this sort of thing. Plus it's a beautiful simulation.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/