Small telescope sights

Returning home from orchestra this evening it was all I could do not to drive off the road.  No it wasn't icy or snowing - it's actually a beautifully clear night, and therein lies the problem:  it's hard to drive and try to pick out a constellation at the same time.  "...no officer, I wasn't texting - I was stargazing."

We must be approaching spring because it's one of those rare nights when it's not only clear, but relatively warm (as in, above 20 degrees Fahrenheit).  It turns out my back yard is an excellent stargazing location - quite dark and unobstructed.  I was so inspired, I decided to drag my 4" Newtonian telescope out into the yard to check out some of my favorite winter sights - there are some great objects for viewing in a small telescope or binoculars up right now.

I started with the Moon - a thin crescent in the western sky.  With binoculars or a small telescope it's possible to see craters and mountains on the moon in fine detail.  In its crescent phase the moon is a special treat because you can not only see the illuminated crescent, but also the dark side of the Moon.  Along the terminator line (the boundary between the light and dark sides) craters stand out in crisp detail.  I played a bit with taking pictures through the telescope with my cell phone camera - not ideal, but it's possible with some careful positioning.  The picture below really doesn't do the Moon justice, but you can clearly see several craters along the terminator, and even one crater with a distinct mountain in the middle.  The Mars Curiosity rover is currently visiting a similar crater on Mars.

Picture of the Moon taken with a cell phone camera through a 4" Newtonian telescope

After the Moon, I turned my telescope towards Orion and pointed towards the sword.  With either binoculars or a telescope, or even the naked eye from a dark location, the middle star in Orion's sword (a vertical line of stars hanging below Orion's belt) appears as a fuzzy patch.  This "star" is actually a nebula - a cloud of gas and dust where new stars are being born.  A little careful observing with a small telescope will reveal that one of the bright stars in the nebula is actually several stars very close together - good eyes or a larger telescope will reveal these to be four bright blue stars in a square, called the trapezium.  I tried to take a picture of the Orion nebula with my cell phone, but faint objects are very hard line up and focus!  A better approach is a real camera mounted on a tripod with the exposure set to 10 seconds - an SLR camera with lots of manual settings is ideal, and digital is best because you can take lots of pictures and experiment with settings.  Here's a picture I stole from someone else.

The Orion Nebula as seen through a small telescope.  Picture from http://www.ericteske.com/2014/02/complete-ias-noviceurban-observing-list.html

Moving on, I swung the telescope up to Jupiter, almost directly overhead.  Through binoculars or a small telescope Jupiter appears as a bright disk with four tiny stars arrayed in a line to either side.  Those tiny "stars" are actually Jupiter's four largest moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - called the "Galilean moons" after Galileo, who discovered them the first time he looked at Jupiter through a telescope.  A bit of patience looking at Jupiter and you may also be able to discern two red bands stretching across the face of Jupiter's disk - these are actually red clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere.  I took a picture of Jupiter and you can distinctly see the moons, but unfortunately the atmospheric bands didn't show up.

Picture of Jupiter taken with a cell phone camera through a small telescope.  The splotch to the right of Jupiter is a reflection on the lens of the telescope.

I may have looked at the Moon, Orion's nebula, and Jupiter hundreds of times through telescopes as big as 30" across, but I still never tire of seeing them.  As a teenager with a 2" telescope set up on my porch, they were among the very few objects I knew how to find, and I would look at them night after night, amazed by these distant worlds.  You don't need a giant telescope to appreciate the night sky - a pair of binoculars is enough to see the Universe in a whole new light.