Date: 24 Sep 2006 23:11:21
From: Uncle Bob
Subject: Happy Birthday Neptune.
|
On Saturday evening, the SF Amateur Astronomers provided an
"after-the-lecture public viewing" following Dr. Chris McKay's talk on the
Huygens probe landing on Titan.
The location was Mt. Tamalpias in Marin county, 2900'. Conditions clear
and warm with a nice thick fog blanketing San Francisco and abating
somewhat SFO light dome. We were able to see all the stars in UMinor at
any rate.
Seeing was very good to excellent. Unusual. I was trying to find a
target that would provide some value to the public, and fretting about it
no little bit because the other participants had already taken the
prominent ones (M 51, 13, etc). I was concentrating on the Lagoon Nebula
as it moved behind the only tree on the horizon, when I noticed a couple
standing behind me using binoculars on Capricorn.
"What are you looking for?", I asked.
"Neptune" they said. "It's the 100th anniversary of its discovery. We
heard it on Star Date today."
"I can find it for you, if you'd like." I said.
I pushed the 18" dob over to Iota Cap (?) and dropped in a 35 Panoptic.
There she was, just on the edge of the field. The "new" outermost planet.
Not a disc in the 35 as far as I could tell, so I slipped in a 7mm Nagler.
At 297X the planet showed a distinct blueish disc. Wavering a bit in the
eyepiece, it was big enough and mostly disc-shaped most of the time, and
that was good enough because the crowd was beginning to show up from the
lecture.
Before long, I had a long line of folks of all ages waiting for a peek at
the distant gas giant. Luckily, I had my Palm Pilot with Palm Planetarium
running, so I could access statistics on the planet and seem smarter than
I really am. 2.6 billion miles. 4.5 hours light travel time...
Neptune, being a featureless tiny blue disc isn't a jaw dropper like
Saturn or Jupiter, but it still has some juice, and hell, if you've never
seen it before, it's apparently worth a 10 minute wait in line to grab a
peek. By evening's end, about 120-150 people had seen it for the first
time. Not a bad night's work.
As it started diving towards the horizon, I was able to find Uranus and
had another run of folks take a look at it. The interest is certainly
there for those far off gas planets.
BTW, it was the 160th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune, not the
100th, But it's not showing its age.
Clear Skies,
Uncle Bob
San Francisco Amateur Astronomers.
|
