Neptune Awaits Your Gaze!

Specific upcoming events: comets, meteors, supernovae, eclipses, etc.
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Apollo XX
MSSF Coordinator
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Joined: Sun Jul 11, 2010 8:11 pm

Neptune Awaits Your Gaze!

Unread post by Apollo XX »

The planet Neptune just passed through opposition and few days ago, so going forward becomes a nice evening target for intrepid star gazers. Seeing Neptune isn't spectacularly rewarding as planetary observing goes, until you consider that it lies somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5ish BILLION miles distant and STILL exhibits a stunning blue hue under high power telescopic investigation. That's kind of amazing when you think about it.

Another interesting factoid about Neptune is that as the furthest fully authorized planet from our Sun (my condolences to Pluto), it can still be easily discerned in your typical run-of-the-mill binoculars. Don't believe what the elites will tell you about how Pluto is just a dwarf planet, yada yada yada, the real reason it got demoted is because there isn't a hand-held binocular in existence that will show it to you. It's that simple - cannot be seen in binos, so not a real planet.

A fellow member of the South Shore group is fond of following the travels of the planets, and he recently shared with us that for the past three years at least, Neptune has been visiting the same grouping of stars in Aquarius during its retrograde travels. As such we have taken the liberty of naming the grouping "Vernon's Neptune Parallelogram". Interestingly, with three of the stars in the grouping Neptune itself forms a parallelogram inside the star parallelogram when it visits the site throughout the month of November.

VernsParallelDuo.png
VernsParallelDuo.png (34.68 KiB) Viewed 1414 times
Neptune in mid-November of 2022. Put a scope on it and crank it up to see the blue.

Attached below you'll find two PDF's. One speaks to how to efficiently find Neptune in an ordinary pair of binoculars, and the other shows Neptune's position throughout the month of November. In both cases Jupiter is the guidepost starting point, which is good because under the typical skies enjoyed by our membership most of the stars in the region are all but invisible without optical aid.

Binocular Path to Neptune.pdf
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Neptune Finder Charts.pdf
(215.59 KiB) Downloaded 41 times

Do be sure to weigh in here with your Neptune observing experience if you happen to venture out to see it. There's talk about next year dividing the club into two groups, the "A" group and the "B" group, with "A" standing for Active observers and "B" standing for Bums. Observing Neptune will keep you out of the "B" group. ;-)

Keep Looking Up!

Mike M.
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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Paul D
Equipment Manager
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Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2004 2:13 pm

Re: Neptune Awaits Your Gaze!

Unread post by Paul D »

Mike,

What program are you using for your charts?
Paul...

16" f/5 Night Sky Truss (Midnight Mistress)
10" f/5 Home built Dob with Parks mirror.
Pre-Meade PST
Celestron Skymaster Binos 25-125x80
Meade Travelview Binos 10x50

See that 16" in the sleek black dress? She is all mine. :)
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Apollo XX
MSSF Coordinator
Posts: 2785
Joined: Sun Jul 11, 2010 8:11 pm

Re: Neptune Awaits Your Gaze!

Unread post by Apollo XX »

Hi Paul,

I use both Stellarium and Cartes du Ciel. These ones were made with Stellarium.

Mike
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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