My Solar System

The Sun holds little excitement for me. At best it's entertaining when there's an eclipse. Most times I think of it as light pollution that is stopping me form seeing the stars!  Ironically, as an astronomical body, it leaves me cold!

Having said that, I had a look though a Hydrogen Alpha filter telescope at HAW19 and the view was awesome. In H-alpha light you really get a feeling that the Sun is a star and we're so close we can get a great view of its turbulent globe.  White light views are so two dimensional it's like looking at a flat circle of paper. No fun at all.  But the H-alpha scope was inspiring.

Pic: This picture is of the partial solar eclipse March 9th 2016.  Taken in intermittant cloud and haze with a Fuji DSLR zoomed to 300mm.  I had to drive eighteen miles south to get out from under thick cloud in Rotherham.

Location Note: I finally found a spot in the Peak District where the cloud cover was breaking up.  I like the dramatic artiness of this shot. Click the address links to see this location. If a location is bold and underlined (see Peak District above), you can click the link to see a view of it, if I haven't got a pic of my own: All these location links are from Google Maps, copyright Google. Don't forget to return by clicking the back button!

Projecting the Sun:

The first time I observed the Sun with a telescope. Having read all the caveats about observing the Sun, and duely throwing away the 'Sun Filter', I set up the telescope to project the Sun's disc onto some white cardboard.  I arranged for there to be another square of cardboard at the front of the tube to cast a shadow over the projection screen and uncapped the refractor.  With a bit of jiggling about, I finally had the image of the Sun on the screen and observed several sun spots. So far so good.  The image, I noticed was becoming blurry and less defined, but I stuck with it and observed some more. 

The next time I tried observing the night sky there was a definite mistiness about the star images. They looked a little out of focus no matter what I did.  I asked my dad to have a look the next day and what he discovered, inside the smoke filled telescope tube, was a good deal of melted plastic around the front part of the eyepiece.  He took the focuser off one end, and the object glass off the other. He cleaned the smoke particles off the lenses and used a craft knife to remove the plastic that had dripped from the eyepiece down in front of the field lens.   We discovered that when you are projecting the Sun's image, if the light (and HEAT) doesn't go directly through the lenses, and hits internal parts of the telescope, the plastic round the eyepiece for example, then the plastic will melt and smoke and generally ruin a good telescope (or a poor one - Physics is not picky!)

I learned my lesson, and I never again used a good telescope to project the sun without a Baader filter in place! Baader filter foil goes in front of the object glass and stops nearly all the light and all the heat from entering the optical system. A much safer plan!

Note: Sun filters used to be a thick and very dark piece of glass that cut down the light that fit into the eyepiece, but had a tendancy to shatter when the heat built up too much. They were supplied, but weren't recommended even in the carefree seventies!

Solar Eclipses:

The first solar eclipse of any kind I witnessed was 30th May 1984. (I really got into astronomy in 1976. You will read about that later. It seems that I have had to wait at least eight years, and usually more like ten, for everything!)

This was a partial eclipse, visible from the UK, and a warm and sunny afternoon. I used my binoculars by projection method, with only one side uncapped, to observe the Moon encroaching on the disc of the Sun. I set up on the drive of my parent's house, I was 21 years old and a year away from having a house of my own.  It wasn't a large partial, but certainly entertaining for my first solar eclipse. The sun was lowering to the west and it was a pleasant afternoon in Astley, Greater Manchester. 

Location Pic: Eleanor Drive, Astley, Manchester, UK. Arrow A is where I made the eclipse observation, looking off the drive and across the road.  (Arrow B is where I first saw Halley's Comet a year later - I had to set up so I could see through the gap between the houses looking toward the large cloud in this pic. There was an inconvenient tree if I set up in the back garden!)

The most memorable, though disappointing, solar eclipse was the long awaited Cornwall 1999 total eclipse. Like most of the country, I had a view of a very thin crescent of the Sun through intermittant thick clouds. I didn't go to Cornwall to be rained on all day as so many did. The weather forecast for the whole country was bleak! But, in the late morning of August 11th 1999, a date that had been eagrely awaited since I first read about it in The Penguin book, Space Exploration, in about 1973, from my back garden in the east midlands, the clouds parted at times to reveal a very thin partial. At the time I lived at no. 30, College Park, Horncastle. The home of the Horncastle Astronomy Weekend (HAW). HAW used to be at the Further Education College in Horncastle - A bonus of living there!  I had a sense of accomplishment at even seeing the crescent, and cursed the forces of nature that, after twenty six years of waiting, presented me with a coudy day as a reward for my patience.  I have no photos of this event, momentous as it was!

I have seen several other partial eclipses of the sun since then. They are inspiring events and I would recommend you to observe one when you get chance.

There are several ways of observing the Sun safely.  The easiest is to make a projection onto some white paper or card. As seen in this picture (left).  I simply held some binoculars with just one side uncapped and projected onto some paper on a clip-board. Be careful with your focusing, make sure the edge of the sun is sharp (If there is an eclipse the edge of the Moon will be sharper to focus on). Any sunspots will be visible as dark points on the disc of the Sun at this stage. You have to get a shadow to fall on the paper for best results. This isn't usually difficult with binoculars as you're there, in the way, holding them!  If you want to photograph it you either have to have three hands or a helper.  I usually have a helper.

Pic:  A photo of a partial eclipse projected using binoculars taken just north of Puerto del Carmen, whilst living in Lanzarote. Oct 3rd 2005.  I took the photo when the Moon was half way across the Sun's disc.

Solar Observation with a Radio Telescope:

I never had much interest in the radio universe. I was, and still am, a visual observer!  However, on a number of occasions, as a devotee of science in general, and astronomy in particular, I have been to the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope Visitor Centre and used the visitor controlled 3m radio dish that used to be sited just outside the visitor centre main hall.  I don't think it is there today.

Observing the Sun using a Radio Telescope: One of the days between Boxing Day 1978 and New Year's Day 1979 my dad took me, and two of my science mad friends, Jeremy Glass and Mick Leonard, to Jodrell Bank (More of these two duffers later!) At the time we lived in the famous seaside town of Blackpool. Jodrell Bank is only about a ninety minute drive from Blackpool, but it's far enough to go in winter. As it happens it was a reasonable day, but could have been horrible weather wise! The sun was poking through when we left at ten-ish and cleared later, allowing us to make our solar observation, just before we came home.

Picture:  Jeremy Glass, ready to go!  Standing outside the back of the Carlton Hotel, Blackpool (See Mercury section). 

An intelligent, brilliant, funny and loyal friend who is sadly missed. RIP Jeremy, 1962-1986.

We spent an entertaining day looking at the radio telescopes and learning all about them.  There were lots of interesting scientific exhibits and interactive things to do for three science mad guys and dad. There was a table orrery (a mechanical model of the Solar System) about 1.5m in diameter that fascinated me and several seventeenth and eighteenth century brass telescopes of various kinds in the museum. I bought some projection slides of one of the Moon landings to remind me of the day. There were also many displays and models with historical information about the Jodrell Bank observatory. All brilliant stuff, and Well worth a trip!

In the main visitor centre there were windows all around that looked out over the fields thereabouts, from which you could see the enormous Mk.I telescope (The famous one!) and just outside one bank of windows, by a technical building of sorts, there was a radio telescope of about seven metres diameter which could be controlled by the public. It had a radio receiver inside the main hall, which could detect various objects' frequencies. We set the frequency selecter to 'Sun' and set to to make our observation. 

I used the joystick to move the dish left/right and up/down, until the shadow of the protruding central aerial was in the center of the dish, indicating that the telescope was pointing directly at the Sun's disc.

Picture:  The 7m telescope avaiable for public recordning of solar activity in radio wave frequencies. As you can see from the shadow of the aerial, in this pic it needs moving to the right and a little higher to center the Sun. I don't think this telescope is there any more!   The 250 foot diameter MkI telescope (in background) is amazing!  It is eleven times the size of the 7m telescope. The difference between the diameters of Earth and Jupiter!

The alignment was quite a 'hit and miss affair' as the scope moved in a series of small jolts! When we were happy that the scope was pointing directly at the Sun, one of the guys pressed the button on the receiver to record the observation.  The printer spat into life and out came a ticker-tape reading of about three metres length of the Sun's radio activity. We couldn't begin to interpret the holes that could only be read by computer, but it was a valid observation of the Sun in radio wave radiation frequencies. We shared the tape between us - About a metre each. At the time I thought it was cool, but in retrospect it was not very exciting for a teenager!  We all had a fantastic day in rural Cheshire, but none of us was particularly turned on by our dip into the world of 'invisible astronomy'.  This remains the only radio observation of an astronmical body I have ever made!

The Moon: Everyone has seen the Moon. It's bright enough to fish by at night. My grandad and I often did that as he told me about the stars. But it was not he who started this whole thing off. Everyone has seen the Moon. But not everyone has seen it through a telescope and the first time you do, it changes your life!

I was five. I've worked out it was late November in 1968, around the 25th as I clearly remember The Moon was just under half phase and we had been doing Christmas decorations at school. That evening, about five thirty or so, my mum shouted me to come outside. I went to the front door and there was a half moon shining in a bright and crisp black sky in the south. It was a chilly night, feeling frosty, and I was keen to get back inside in the warm. Mum had my dad's little 30mm telescope with her.  If I open a drawer in my desk, right now, I can put my hand on that very telescope!

Picture: For the purposes of this photo, I opened that drawer, and took out the first telescope I ever used, on some far away, bright autumn night in 1968.  This picture was taken, 24th Feb 2021, after 50+ fun packed years behind the eyepiece. (The 'Telescope' behind me is a lamp I made!)

Back in 1968, mum had my dad's little drawtube telescope firmly held against a metal pole that supported the porch roof outside the communal front door, that led to our flat, in Stanley Avanue, Poulton-le-Fylde. She encouraged me to have a look. I put my eye to the eyepiece and said something like, “Yeah, the Moon.”

Mum checked the alignment, she knew I hadn't seen the Moon, and suggested I had another look. I did. “It's the Moon,” I said again without much enthusiasm. Mum persisted and my life changed forever: I had a third look through the telescope. This time, instead of the telescope showing a patch of black empty sky, there was the nearly half-full Moon filling the view.

A brilliant white half disc with craters in stark relief. Mountains and valleys and the darker lava seas and the ragged terminator. The detail seemed to jump out in the first instant. “The Moon. The Moon. Mum, I've seen the Moon!!! ”, I shouted jumping with excitement. (I think this is where I learned to use too many exclamation marks.)

That was it. I learned that you can see amazing things with even modest instrumentation. At the time I didn't know it, but that little telescope had set my life on a course that has led me through some amazing views of things I never thought possible.

Location Pic: The observation place, still with the metal pole, where I had my first astronomical view, of any kind, through a telescope.

Lunar Eclipses:

A lunar eclipse takes place if the Moon passes through the shadow cone of the Earth.  These are rarer than you might imagine because of the tilt of the Moon's orbit.  I remember well the first Lunar eclipse that I saw.  At the time I had just started regular correspondance with Patrick Moore about things I was discovering. I had lots of questions, which Patrick courteously answered every month for at least the next year or so! It was in one of these letters that he made me aware of the upcoming Lunar eclipse.  It was the partial of April 4th 1977,  I had to get up in the middle of the night to see it, and duely set my alarm clock for 04:20 (We were in BST daylight saving). The start of the eclipse was 03:30UT and the maximum shadow coverage was 04:18UT.

It was interesting to see that as the Moon entered the shadow, it moon appeared to have a bite out of it. It didn't look at all like when it's in a phase. The disc remained white and the shadow was black. As this was only a partial eclipse there was no spectacular reddening of the Moon and I got fed up quickly enough.  It was a cold night and I was tired. I didn't stay out long, just long enough to get past the maximum shadow coverage.  I was tucked up in bed and asleep well before the Moon moved out of the shadow of the Earth at 05:06UT, I had to be up for school that bright Monday morning. I asked around among my friends, but no-one else had seen the eclipse . (Just me, the fanatic!)

Picture: The Moon moves into the shadow of the Earth. The Moon moves right to left in the sky by its own diameter every 56 minutes approximately. The Earth's shadow at the distance of the Moon is just over two and a half times the size of the Moon!

Lunar Eclipses in 2025:  14th March, early morning from 05:11. The eclipsed Moon will set for the UK before the end of the event.  There is also a total lunar eclipse visible from anywhere east of Berlin!  The Moon will rise in the UK just after the end. Shame.

Note: Unlike Solar eclipses, if the shadow of the Earth falls on the Moon, anyone on Earth, that can see the Moon in their sky, can see the eclipse.  By comparison, in a Solar eclipse you have to be in the shadow cone yourself the see anything.

What I like about observing The Moon:

Watching the shadow move in retreat, across a crater floor, and the light touching the tip of the central peak. A tiny spot of light in the shadow darkness.  I like looking at the cusp of the Moon to see tops of mountains illuminated off the end into the dark sky.

The first time I saw it, I was specifically looking for it, of course. You don't just happen to notice Mercury. At the time I lived in the seaside town of Blackpool.  I had walked the few hundred metres (yards in those days) to my best friend, Jeremy Glass' home. His father was the manager of the Carlton Hotel, on the North Shore sea front.

Location Pic:  The exact position of my first sighting of little Mercury, approximately at its 'greatest Eastern elongation', viewed from the balcony arrowed, outside the residential lounge of the Carlton Hotel, Blackpool. This is a modern pic, copyright Google.

(RIP: Jeremy Glass 1962-1987 a very good and loyal friend, who is missed every day. My son is named after him.)

Jeremy and I stood on the front porch outside the lounge, he with his 7x50s and I with my 10x50 binoculars. We were looking out to sea, an excellent western vista. We had a good view of the hues of the dusk sky over the horizon, with Venus hanging resplendant that evening, like a drop of silver in the twilight. This apparition was in mid to late March in 1978.  It was easy to find Venus in the purple haze of the first onset of dusk, and just a degree or two above the brilliant white planet was a tiny point of light, looking for all the world like a star, nessled in the evening twilight, above the wide expanse of the Irish Sea. It was the ellusive planet Mercury, slightly pinkish, but with no hint of its half phase in my binoculars.

I have seen Mercury, not many times, but a good few, since that evening. Most notably when it appeared, yet again, within a few degrees of Venus on the 16th January 2015.  Thanks to Venus acting as an obvious signpost, and to some clear weather that lasted over a week, it was easy to find little Mercury for three nights of that elongation.

 Pic: The picture was taken with my Fuji DSLR - zoomed to 300mm lens, and I don't think I'm fooling mysef if I claim that it looks slightly pink on this photo.  The two planets were about two or three degrees aparent separation and almost exactly South-West azimuth direction, from my back garden in Handsacre, on this photo. 

(I don't stay in the same place for long, you'll discover! I've lived all over the place and never anywhere for more than nine years! The longest single stretch was my school years in Blackpool, 1972 to 1981)

 Note: Mercury is never visible as much less than half phase in the telescope, because of the difficulties of seeing it - It is usually almost or at its farthest from the sun, just about half phase, when it is visible.

What I like about observing Mercury:

The mere fact of observing Mercury is reward enough for this difficult object. Lots of things have to come together:

The right elongation perameters, a 'signpost', like Venus or the Moon close by, and the weather, in the few short days of the apparition, all must be exactly right to give you a chance!  Once the planet is found, the faint pink tinge is wonderful, if you can discern it in your instrument.

Transits of Mercury:

This is the rare event when the planet moves between the Earth and the Sun's disc. Using projection or specialised camera equipment, the event can be watched by amateur astronomers on the Earth.  Transits of Mercury can only happen in May or November!

I observed the transits of this little planet as it crossed the Sun's disc.   The first transit of Mercury I saw was May 7th 2003. I was living at 55, Spilsby Road, Horncastle, Lincolnshire and set up a projection using a small refractor in the back garden looking east (This was the house where I had welcomed John Dobson for a two night stay in 2002). I made this observation before I had to go to work. The transit started at 05:13 and went on until 10:32. I made my observation from 06:50 to 07:35. The planet was quite close to the Sun's edge when I began and got steadily further onto the disc before I had to give up on this transit and leave for work at the DWP in Lincoln. I was at work by 08:30, but I knew that, as I looked out of the office window, Mercury would still be on the face of the Sun until about tea-break time.

The next transit I observed was May 9th 2016, this one was a little better, as it was later in the day, and I was off work!  By now I was living in South Yorkshire in the town of Rotherham at 99, Grange Road. I set up a refractor telescope to project the Sun in the back garden. I was trading telescopes by this time and I used a Celestron Astromaster 80mm refractor I had in stock to project the Sun's disc onto white card. I have no personal photographic evidence of these events (Sorry).

 Pic: On 9th May 2016, there was a transit of Mercury. The planet is below centre and a little to the right.

(Thanks to, and Copyright David Graham)

Note: The next transit of Mercury is 13th November 2032.

TARDIS: It may also be interesting to you that as Mercury is so close to the gravitational mass of the Sun, and moves so quickly, that, by the laws of relativity, if an observer on Mercury could see a clock on Earth, an hour on Earth would be seen to take only 59 minutes to pass, as seen from the surface of Mercury.  Seen from Earth, an hour passes on Mercury in 61 minutes!

Venus is a planet that doesn't normally need to be searched for, except, maybe, if you decide to observe this bright planet in the daylight sky of mid-afternoon, when many times I have picked up its brilliant white phase in a telescope, backed by a beautiful blue sky (As seen in the pic).

Venus is the largest apparent sized solar system body in our telescopes, apart from the Sun and Moon, of course. It can grow to a minute of arc (60 seconds of arc).

Pic:  The planet Venus as seen through my SkyWatcher 200P f5 Newtonian on the sunny evening of the 6th of May 2020, at 19:06 UT.  I had been watching her intermittently from about 15:00BST in the scope. What a pleasant afternoon in the back garden of my bungalow at 28, Queensway, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, during UK lockdown 1.

The first time I noticed Venus (and Jupiter), around Christmas 1973, curiosity drove me to find out what it was, such was its brilliance. I had noticed the pair of really bright stars in the west after sunset, especially as Dad drove me home a couple of times from my grandparent's house in Poulton-le-Fylde, heading home towards Blackpool, along the A586 'Garstang Road West'. There was a very low horizon looking toward the sea and for a few days the weather was nice and there was a lovely evening view of the planets together in the sky. Click the address links to see this location, The road and the view west copyright Google as are all these 'location links'.

My grandad knew a few things about the stars and planets, mainly through his interest in navigation at sea, and I asked him what the pair of super-bright stars was in the west after sunset.

“Venus, the evening star and Jupiter!”, he answered.

I was still not yet eleven years old. This observation was the catalist for my interest and I got bitten by the bug of astronomy proper after this Venus aparition. Venus represented "The Christmas Star" to me at that time. 

A little history: I started secondary school at Warbreck High School, Blackpool, in September 1974. I found myself placed into 'Form One-One'. That was the first year and 'top' class - Written 1¹  - I had done well in the primary school final exams. It was Mr. (Eddie) Whittaker's class. He was the head of year one. He was funny and an entertaining form master as I settled in to secondary school life. I began to excell and be interested in all branches of the subjects under the heading 'science': being good at Chemistry, Physics and Biology at school. Being involved with four or five like-minded school friends grew my science knowledge and nurtured that way of thinking. 

In 1976, (Third year: Form Three-Two: 3²) I took Chemistry and Biology as my chosen science subjects. Pupils could only choose two of the three! But, to add another science subject to my portfolio, in 1978 I also did an external Astronomy 'O' Level evening course at Lytham St. Anne's College of Further Education. I passed my astronomy 'O' Level at fifteen, a year before my final secondary school exams. It is a shame that Jeremy Glass's father wouldn't let him take the Astronomy 'O' Level. He wanted to but his dad thought it would distract him from the exams he needed to pass to enter Army officer training, which he did after sixth form in 1982. (There is a picture of the college building in the Jupiter section below).  At school, we were entered into CSE and GCE examinations in boilogy and just once for the other science subjects and the humanities. I'm pleased to say I passed them all. I left school with four passes in science subjects: Biology, Chemistry and Astronomy GCE (O Level) and also the Biology CSE! I also passed my Maths, English and Art A Level (Those with an aptitude for Art did their O Level in the 4th year in 1978)  At the same time I was doing my Astronomy O Level I did Art too - I had two qualifications in 1978, a year before I left secondary school. I currently hold a 'Certificate of Higher Education' from the Open University, having completed university modules in maths, technology, computing, writing, and Spanish.

Back to the story: In the spring of 1976, I turned thirteen and on May 3rd, I bought myself 'Star and Planet Spotting', a brilliant book by Peter Lancaster Brown. Reading this book and using the planetary location tables at the back in conjunction with the star maps, I was able to find the planets in the night sky for myself. I had to wait until nearly Christmas for Venus to crawl out of the Sun's glare.  I saw the brilliant Venus over the rooftops to the south west from my upstairs bedroom of my grandparents' house in Poulton-le-Fylde.  I stayed there during most school holidays and it was where, together with my parents' house in Blackpool, I read and read and read anything and everything I could get my hands on from the public library about telescopes, optics, astronomy and its history. Whenever it wasn't dark or clear outside over the next four or five years, I would be found learning as much as I could about this fascinating science and hobby, regularly looking out from the back door, hoping for a break in the clouds during the hours of darkness.

The first time I saw the phase of Venus through a telescope was a few years after I first saw it paired in the sky with Jupiter. I got a very basic terrestrial 60mm telescope for that Christmas in 1976 and trained it on Venus at the next clear sky between Christmas and New year. I observed the planet in the twilight sky in the west just after sunset. The 'Astral Telescope' showed a beautiful crescent, brilliant white and large in the eyepiece against a blue sky. Despite only having a maximum of 60x magnification the planet was impressively large.

I remember thinking how odd it was to be able to see another world as a crescent. The only other body that is easily seen as such a thin sliver of light. I have always been good at spotting Venus by eye, in the early evening sky, and my first telescopic observation was very similar to the pic above as far as the phase goes (But it was totally devoid of any cloud shading as you would expect in a poor quality, 60mm telescope with 60x magnification and no experience!).

Pic: The 60mm Astral Telescope. The Blackpool house had no grass, just a concrete back yard, but in Poulton-le-Fylde, I generally did my observations from the back lawn which had wonderful north, south and western views.  Although this telescope was very poor optically, and in design, it was the best I had, and did give me a reasonable view of the crescent Venus on many occasions.

What I like about observing Venus:

The large, thin crescent Venus, with faint dusky markings in an azure blue sky, in Spring, is the most wonderful sight. Although there's not a lot to see, markings wise, it pays to have a large telescope for venus, the larger the better!

Transits of Venus:

This is a very rare event when the planet moves between the Earth and the Sun's disc. Using projection or specialised camera equipment, the event can be watched by amateur astronomers on the Earth.  Transits of Venus happen in pairs separated by eight years, and then there is a gap of 121.5 years before the next pair of transits.

Unfortunately, for newcomers to the hobby, there have 'recently' been a pair of transits in 2004 and 2012.  The next pair may be seen by very old persons who are as yet children, as the first of the pair of transits is in 2117!  As I write this in 2020, some who are yet ungotten and unborn will pass away at a goodly age before the next transit of Venus - Which is a sobering thought!

PIC: On 8th June 2004, there was a transit of Venus. The planet Venus is a lot more obvious than tiny Mercury was!

Also notice that the edge of the planet is fuzzy. This is light passing through the top part of the atmosphere and blurring the edge.

 (Thanks to, and Copyright David Graham)

I observed the transit of June 8th 2004 but not 6th June 2012.  Transits of Venus are easier to observe because the planet is larger and closer than Mercury, but also much rarer than those of tiny Mercury.  I was living in the house in Horncastle where I had made my first Mercury transit observation, and set up a projection using the same refractor in the morning after sunrise and after morning clouds had moved on, when the transit was already in progress.  The transit started at 05:13, (Strangely, the exact same time as the 2003 Mercury transit!) and went on until 11:26.  It was great to see Venus against the face of the Sun, knowing that it was such a rare event.  At the time I hoped I would see the next transit in 2012, but it was not to be. Little did I know it at the time, but my first Venus transit was also my last!

Note: The next pair of transits will occur on 10th December, 2117 and 8th December, 2125.

Mars has always been a very disappointing world to me. Science fiction stories and films, and indeed the fascinating Percival Lowell story, made much of this planet, but the reality was rather less inspiring.

There are seven hundred and eighty days between successive oppositions, that's over two years! Even then Mars can be unfavourably tiny nonetheless. Detail is something only seen by experienced  observers in almost any sized telescope! I can't ever recall seeing the polar caps very clearly in any instrument and the 'dark markings' also have always apeared very slight to me. I have great admiration for people who's eyesight and instrumentation have allowed them to see these things. But, for me, Mars has given little excitement over the years.

Pic: Mars at opposition (2020) with a good quality 6" (152mm) Opticraft Sealed-Tube Cassegrain and very good seeing. This image represents about the best I have ever seen of the markings or polar caps. You see what I mean?  I have had similar results with a SkyWatcher 150PL and the SkyWatcher Classic Dob 150 at the December 2022 opposition. Mars has an orbit that brings it closer to Earth at southern oppositions and farther away at northern ones. So, when Mars is well placed for northern observers it is always small in the eyepiece.  The next opposition is January 2025.

NOTE:  I bought this particular Opticraft 6" Cassegrain telescope for just £25 (could you have resisted the urge? Could you be so lucky?  See my Second Hand Buying Guide) I knew Opticraft had some production quality problems, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was "one of their good ones"!

Back in the '70s, I didn't really expect to see Mars until I had my own telescope. There was going to be an opposition in late January 1978 and I had my mediocre Astral 60mm ready to observe the red planet in late December! Being the school holidays, I was naturally in at my grandparent's house, thinking about Mars as Christmas 1977 approached. Whilst planning the observation of Mars at that coming opposition, I realised that I could see the red planet rising if I took my scope into my grandparent's bedroom. There was a gap between the buildings opposite and Mars rose between the two houses at about half past eight in the evening.  I watched the fiery, but tiny, globe rise into the slightly misty sky through the telescope, to the strains of the Carpenter's “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” coming from Grandad's radio.  Thoughts of 'War of the Worlds' echoed in my mind as I observed the planet. I learned just how bright Mars can be at that opposition, but disappointed by how small the planet is in the eyepiece (Remember, the Astral telescope magnified only 60x at 'best'. Mars is small at 200x)

I don't advocate viewing through a window (open or closed!) However, neither my enthusiasm or impatience knew any bounds in my early days of astronomical obsession. The view through the open window was the only way that I would get to see Mars before it rose above the houses proper after nine thirty!

What I like about observing Mars:

Mars is a small world but rewards your efforts if you have decent instrumentation. A telescope of 150mm will show markings and the polar caps in favourable conditions at opposition.  There are many times when the red planet is just a tiny bland disc, devoid of any detail. On the rare occasions when markings can be seen it is a magical moment.  This is sometimes due to the atmospheric seeing on Earth, but also because detail can be hidden beneath Martian dust storms that rage for weeks.

Location Pic: The very window through which I had my first telescopic view of Mars on 20th December, 1977 at 18, Westwood Avenue, Poulton-Le-Fylde, Lancashire, UK. (The tree wasn't there in the nineteen seventies). 

Interesting:  I used to read about astronomers noticing that the dark markings came and went with regularity. They were said to darken over a period of about an Earth year, then go back to their original appearance again, after becoming almost invisible for a few months.  This was taken as possible evidence of vegitation growth in the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, thanks to the rovers which now patrol the red planet, we now know that on Mars the summer heat creates many thousands of small tornados in Mars' atmosphere, which pluck dust from the surface, revealing swept lanes of darker bedrock below (the darkening of the features) and then, as the winter takes hold, an Earth year later, there are huge winds that drive hemisphere-wide dust storms and recarpet the ground with a uniform layer of dust (The fading and reset). The process repeats in the other hemisphere over the next two Earth years (One Martian year). The darkening and resetting of the features is very real, but nothing to do with vegitation!

In early September 2019, at 'HAW19', held at Minting Village Hall, I was given the opportunity to observe with Mark Dunnett’s 102mm f11 refractor on a superb motorised EQ Go-To robotic mount. Mark said, “Here's Neptune,” and pressed a button. The telescope turned itself to point at a blank bit of sky.  When I looked in the eyepiece, there was the familiar sight of the tiny blue disc of Neptune.

“Uranus?” he said, and the telescope slewed to another bit of sky. Once again I looked in the eyepiece and there was the blue-green god of the underworld.  Then, in fairly quick succession, Mark showed me the bright asteroids on view that night: Pallas, my new friend, then, Vesta, Astraea, Ceres and Flora...

I had spent more than forty years waiting to see one asteroid, and he'd shown me four new ones in less than the time it took me to star-hop to Pallas just forty four days earlier!

“Hebe will be up later if you want to wait?” asked Mark, helpfully.

I went home with plans to get my own robotic telescope (I had always thought them a cheat, but having seen how easy they make locating difficult objects, I was sold!).  I got a very nice SkyWatcher 130P GTI-AZ brand new from my favourite supplier. It worked very well, and I saw plenty of asteroids for a few months. But along came 2020 and events took a turn and I sold off all my telescopes, for personal reasons. 2020 has a lot to answer for.

Pic: The 130P GTI-AZ was a lovely instrument. Just for once a telescope that only needed a Red-Dot finder (But I changed it for a 'proper one' nevertheless! See pic. The more accurately you set up a GoTo telescope, the better will be the location of objects using it. A magnifying, optical finder does the job much better than any RDF! If you do have an RDF, locate the star approximately using it, then centre the star in the telescope eyepiece using the app controls and a 10mm eyepiece.)

The SkyWatcher 130AZ-GTI has its own WiFi system, and connects to the observer's mobile phone via an app to control the telescope. Initial set up of the scope is performed with the mobile app. Then, observations of specific objects are done by selecting the desired object off an extensive list, or by manually moving the telescope with direction buttons which activate the motors on the mounting axes.

Picture: The position of asteroid 4, Vesta, amongst the stars of southern Taurus (Tau), in November 2019

What I like about observing The Asteroids:

 Just finding these little worlds is a feat. I like to observe them moving past the background stars, indeed, this is the only way of knowing which of the tiny points of light is the asteroid!  They are further out than Mars but still move reasonably quickly. If they are close enough to a field of stars their movement can be seen in just an hour or so, and certainly by the next night.

Jupiter is a planet that welcomes viewers. The real showman of the Solar System. He's always big and there's always something going on. Belts and bands come and go, the great red spot, elusive but detectable with patience and experience, and all the while, the ringmaster juggles four easily visible moons, Io (pronounced Eye-Oh in the UK and E-Oh in the US) Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, which range in their real sizes approximately between half the diameter of our Moon and a little larger than the planet Mercury!

 Pic: - The approximate view through the AE 12" Newtonian... The moons are little discs, and the ellusive Great Red Spot is visible.

In secondary school, in Blackpool, in the early seventies, I had a group of about five science mad friends. We watched Tomorrow's World on the BBC avidly, and all had a school subsidised subscription to 'New Scientist' magazine. One day I was talking to my fanatical biology friend, Michael Leonard, about my interest in astronomy and he invited me to his house that night to see mighty Jove through his telescope.

Time and Place: Sometime mid November, I reckon, 1976. Observation made at Layton, Blackpool. Mick, asked me to come to his house at about 7pm, to try out his refractor (A 60mm f15 Alt-Az job). I cycled down Wharley Road with Jupiter on my right, to his house in the chilly evening air with the relatively unknown constellations of stars above. We went outside and set the telescope up on the front of his house where there was a patio of sorts, a few pots with plants, but no grass. 

We saw what Mick called 'the Northern Cross' (The constellation Cygnus) which was high in the south-west. The only planet about at that time was Jupiter, in the south east. We looked at the open star cluster of the Pleiades (It was the 'Seven Sisters' to us schoolboys in the '70s) before Mick trained the telescope on the bright planet. The views of Jupiter through that telescope poured fuel on the sputtering flames of my astronomical interest. Once I found out that you could easily see markings on the planet with an affordable 60mm telescope, I was buzzing. This was 'amazing'!

I rushed home to try out my dad's small telescope on the planet that very night. I found that you could see Jupiter and its moons with the 30mm, but the disc was just pale and featureless in that tiny telescope.  The next day I started the pester campaign that would result in me getting my own 60mm telescope for Christmas that very year.  Nowadays, I advocate at least a seventy millimetre refractor for a serious start in planetary observation, but this was the nineteen seventies UK and a sixty millimetre was one of the biggest readily available telescopes to be had. Dedicated 'telescope dealers' and 'telescope shops' were a future thing in those days - In the summer of 1977 my parents took me on holiday to Spain and was amazed to find a camera shop in the little fishing village of Denia, which had a 115mm Newtonian in the window! The scope was 17,500 pesetas - About £150. I was very disappointed that we didn't have such things in the shops of the UK!

Back then, available to me, was 'Dixons' camera and Hi-Fi chain, three or four second hand telescope adverts in Exchange and Mart, and the blessed Dudley Fuller at Fullerscopes 'Telescope house' Farringdon Road, London. He would sell you a three inch refractor (76mm) for seven times the price of the sixty millimetre I had to settle for.  I visited the Fullerscopes' shop in October 1977 (Not far from the London Planetarium), though I still couldn't afford a 'proper' telescope. We spent an informative and entertaining afternoon talking to Dudley. His prices were fair, and his telescope optics were first rate, but his excellent instruments were well beyond my schoolboy pockets.  I remember, there was a huge, highly polished brass, Victorian 6 inch f12 Broadhurst and Clarkson refractor in the corner of the shop with a £10,000 price tag on it... I thought it was a joke... It wasn't!  Blimey! You could buy three new family cars in 1977 with that kind of money!

Anyway: Back to the story... While I waited two months for my persuasion campaign to bear fruit, I still had use of the little 30x30 refractor, through which I first saw the Moon for my astronomy viewing. It had now been mounted on a lightweight photographic tripod, by dad. It wasn't ideal, but it was far better than trying to hand hold the telescope. There was a period of what seemed like three weeks of clear evenings, from about four o'clock, as twilight set in, when I could watch Jupiter rise over the roof of the house opposite and then, as darkness fully fell, after tea, I could take my scope out to the back yard where we had room to park two cars. We didn't have a garden. Or two cars, come to that!  More often than not, there was no car parked in the back yard and it made an excellent place to observe from. The one street-light visible in the alley from my observing position (actually just by the corner of the yard) used to go out at midnight on a timer, and I was in almost pitch black (even with dark adaption in a large town, known for it's lights, I could see virtually nothing but the stars above. Amazing!)  This situation gave me a brilliant start to my discovery of the wonders of the night sky. 

After getting the 60mm telescope for Christmas 1976, I spent my first few night's observations looking at Jupiter, just as I had with Mick in Layton two months earlier. Jupiter is a great subject for the small telescope.  I never saw markings on Jupiter with the 30mm telescope, and I never noticed them in Astral 60mm that I had pestered for, come to that, but the moons were entertaining in both. 

The Astral Telescope's optics must have been shockingly bad, or maybe it was just the f7 optics and the 60x maximum magnification and the inexperience of a young teenage amateur astronomer? Years later, in 2003, I oversaw the construction of an achromatic f12 60mm with some students for a project, which I directed as Tutor of a 'Project Research and Development' course in Mablethorpe business centre. The students and I used it with a 12mm eyepiece and the bands and belts of the Jovian disc were clearly visible in that, also at just 60x magnification!

My most memorable view of Jupiter, though, was through the AE Optics 12" f7 skeleton Newtonian at the Lythm St. Annes Astronomical Society in 1978. An f7 12 inch is a big instrument both optically and physically. It took four of us to set it up, but the view was truly fantastic.

The society met in the College of Further Education where I took my Astronomy O-Level. The room was the second and third window to the right of the main door. This room, where I sat my astronomy exam, was also the Lythm St. Annes Astronomical Society meeting room. The building is now a library.

Location Pic: The exact lawn position where we set up the scope to view Jupiter. The tree is in the foreground, to the north of the telescope position on the path.  The southern view was excellent.

One evening I attended the society meeting and as it was a nice night, my mentor Kenneth Porter (Society secretary and Astronomy course tutor) suggested we get the college's telescope out for a view of mighty Jove... WOW.  I had never imagined that you could see so much detail. The moons were tiny yellowish discs, not just points of light - Io was distinctly yellower than the others!

Elswhere in this website, I mention seeing Jupiter through the 30" (760mm) diameter Dobson telescope at the AAC (pic left). The view at 200x was nice, but not spectacular as it was an early evening viewing and the planet was low over the warm hills of the Pennines. The seeing was quite poor with the heat of the ground rising into the sky.  As I remember, Jupiter set behind the hills before they cooled down enough to get a good view.

What I like about observing Jupiter:

The detail available in a good telescope of 150mm is quite surprising. The belts begin to show some detail at this telescope size and the moons are very entertaining as they cross the planet disc, eclipse and occult eachother.  There's always something going on in the Jovian system and there is always detail to be seen.

Was it worth it? Are you joking? Saturn, at sixty magnification on a freezing cold, still and black night in December, is an absolute wonder!  “Saturn's rings!” I kept muttering to myself, “I'm looking at Saturn's rings with my own telescope!”

Saturn takes about thirty years to go round the Sun once.  It has orbited the Sun about one and a half times since that first view on a cold, December night in 1976. When I first saw Saturn he was just a few years short of presenting the rings edge on, which happens twice per Saturnian orbit (Every 15 years or so).

Pic: Approximate view of Saturn in Paul Money's 14" Newtonian, November 2001. The moon in the picture, on the far left, is Titan, which can be seen in an achromatic 6x30 finder-scope. My most memorable view of Saturn was through Paul Money's superb 14", Dobson mounted Newtonian when the rings were nearly fully open. Following the remounting of the scope onto a more usable mounting, Paul had pushed the boat out and had the primary mirror had realuminised. The planet was absolutely amazing on a night with superb seeing.

Saturn can be a very bright planet when the rings are fully open (see pic), but when they're edge on, as they were in 1979/80, 1994/95, 2010/11... it's quite an unobtrusive object.  They will be edge-on again in December 2025.

Ooh! Imagine starting out in astronomy at a time when Saturn is just a plain globe without its show-piece! I've seen Saturn without its rings three times in my astro-life, so far. I wonder how many times I will see it again before I drift off to join the orbiting spheres?

Pic:  Paul and I with the newly remounted AZ 14" Newtonian pictured in May 2000.  I made the mounting to get some use out of the old girl. The Equatorial mounting it had was just too heavy to keep carrying out to observe and the Dobson mounting was much lighter and easier to set up - The scope has had a lot of use since being remounted. Even after twenty years of use, Paul tells me, "The mounting is as good as ever!" (June 2020)

What I like about observing Saturn:

It has to be the rings when they're nicely open. A good, long focus 60mm refractor telescope will show them clearly. A 90mm will show ring A and B as different shades and hint at the Cassini Division, a 150mm parabolic Newtonian will show the rings nicely defined. Anything over 150mm will present a superb view - Whatever instrument you see Saturn in first, it will be amazing!

Note: In 2025 the rings are edge on, which is a sight to see in itself, but robs newcomers to the hobby of the most spectacular sight!  Saturn's moons are usually more difficult to identify because they aren't all strung out in a line, like Jupiter's, and that is because of the 29 degree tilt of Saturn's axis.  When there are no rings to be seen, the Saturnian satellites do string out and can more readily be identified. There are at least five that can be easily followed with a 150mm telescope.

Uranus, the magician. I'll never forget my first glimpse of this intriguing world. It was in 1982. I had a pair of Hilkinson 20x70 binoculars, which I'd bought in for £12 from a second-hand shop (Not a charity shop in those days!) at the end of Egerton Road in Blackpool in 1980 (I lived at number 45, between 1972 and 1981). In late 1981 I moved to a bed-sitting room in a huge villa in Bennet Road, Crumpsall in North Manchester, to be near my girlfriend. It had a wonderful sash window, over seven feet tall and about four feet wide, facing south. The room was nice and the rent was £11 a week. I had a nice low southern horizon looking out over low primary school buildings and the playground. No lighting after seven o'clock, even in the winter months. There were some small trees around the perimeter of the school that have since grown to be huge! 

Note: You shouldn't observe out of an open window because of the warmer air currents spilling out of the warm house... I used to do my observations as soon as I got in from my girlfriend's house, at midnight or thereabouts - It wasn't warm in my flat at that point.  The warmer air, even at midnight in February, if anything, spilled in!

Location Pic:

The house in Bennett Road. There were four flats and my bed-sitting room in this building. I spent about a year living here, following my insatiable passions for both astronomy and Deby Ryan.

Uranus was in the process of doing a dance with a pair of stars in Scorpius. I watched it over several weeks after it passed between the pair of stars, 'Omega 1' and 'Omega 2'. It was in retrograde motion. My first view was just a few days before the planet moved between the two stars - It was an easy identification... I just had to look for the third 'star' and that was the planet. The first time I looked for it, about 00:30 hrs UT on April 27th 1982, I couldn't mistake which one it was. The planet had a steadier light and the greeny-blue colour, even in binoculars, was a dead giveaway. I watched it pass directly between the two stars on the nights of May 1st and 2nd 1982.  Magical.

Stephen James O'Meara (left in the pic) is famous for observing this planet. He was the NASA adviser on Uranus' rotation period for the Voyager 2 mission. He gauged the rotation period using nothing more than a 9” refractor to within ten minutes of the actual figure of 17h 13m 35s.  A truly remarkable feat.

I have never seen Uranus showing a disc, which makes Steven's accomplishment even more amazing for me. It is small at an angular size just twice that of Ganymede.  With good seeing and a good 200mm telescope, the disc should be observable.  Good luck!

Pic: Steven J O'Meara in white shirt, and me at HAW 2001.  If you ever get chance to hear Steven speak, go and listen, he is very informative and entertaining!

 Pic: This is my convertible car that I drove Steven to Paul Money's house after HAW 2001.  During the trip the roof was down, as it nearly always was!  I use the engine every time I drive, why not the convertible roof? If you've got it, use it. It was nice to have a car with astronomical pretensions - A driveable observatory.

What I like about observing Uranus:

This planet has a distinctive colour, a greeny-blue. It makes identifying Uranus very easy in any instrument.  Finding the planet and knowing that it is so far away is the interest I have for Uranus.  I also love the story of its discovery and have been to the museum at Herschell House, New King Street, Bath.

Neptune, the mystic, had to wait a few years after Uranus before I got my beady eye on him. The first time I saw Neptune was at a week long work party at the Amateur Astronomy Centre (AAC) in 1986 with my friends, Phil Wray, and Nigel Brown. We would work on the site through the day, observe if clear by night.

We made the observation of a tiny blue point, close to Mars, on the early Wednesday morning (some time between 03:50 and 04:30), of 9th April 1986.  We stayed up even later than usual for this observation. There wasn't much of a window of opportunity to see these two. As I remember, the planets didn't rise above ten degrees until 04:45 and it became too light to see Neptune after 05:10! A poacher's observation!  Neptune would be at it's closest to Mars and easily spotted if we could just get this observation made... Would it be coudy, or clear?

Luckily, it was clear. We were using a five inch binocular telescope that belonged to the AAC (pic) and which could be borrowed by anyone visiting. It was easy to find the bright firey red, Mars. But then all we had to do was tilt the instrument slightly higher and there was this tiny little blue point. Neptune.  We observed until it was too light to see the planet and switched back to Mars, and Saturn for a little while before bed.

Pic: The 5" binocular telescope was on an alt-az stand and tripod. Slightly too short to be comfortable.  The chair was always close by for objects in the lower third of the sky, and a red plastic-covered seat cushion out of a caravan to protect the observer's knees on the ground, for use when observing objects that were annoyingly higher in altitude.  The inclusion of forty five degree or right angle prisms would have been a nice addition to this instrument!

There's not much to be seen of this distant world with amateur sized instruments and I have never seen a disc in all these years. It's about the same size as Ganymede in your telescope... not at all an obvious disc. At around 2.2 seconds of arc diameter it's extremely difficult even to make out that it is a disc at all. The colour is obvious though and, having seen the images from Voyager 2, all the more evocative of those fantastic pictures that the probe sent back to our own 'little blue dot'.

Location Pic: The position of the 5" binocular instrument at the AAC where I first saw Neptune. Just outside the member's caravans on the concrete apron.  (The 40" dome, seen middle left of the pic, was under construction at the time of my first Neptune observation.)

I used to visit the Amateur Astronomy Centre nearly every month for weekend work parties and occasional week long stays. They had the regular star parties in spring and autumn. I attended every one from 1983 to 1991.  It was there I met and became friends with many of my astronomical friends and helped to construct the 30" Dobsonian Newtonian and the observatory for the 40" Newtonian.   I was 'Founder Member 357'.

What I like about observing Neptune:

This planet has a very distinctive and beautiful colour, a gorgeous light blue. It makes identifying Neptune very easy in any instrument.  Finding the planet and knowing that it is so far away is the interest I have for Neptune.

Since that time I have tried to get in touch, from the Astronomy Centre website, several times, and have been ignored. No return emails from my enquiries at all!  Give it a go, you may be lucky!  They are now called "The Astronomy Centre" and are located in a dark site in the Pennine hills near Clough Foot, between Bacup in Lancashire and Todmorden in West Yorkshire. Star parties in particular were very good in the 80s. The wealth of instrumentation and good humour was amazing in those far off years.

Pluto,

No! 'The King of the Kuyper belt', is a world I have never seen. 

It's an interesting statistic that only 1% of the world's population have seen Mercury, but less than 1% of the world's ASTRONOMERS have ever seen Pluto... Not an easy world to identify!

Picture: The telescopic appearance of Neptune passing its time out at 30 astronomical units, that's 2.8 billion miles, from the Sun  (An astronomical unit is the distance from the Sun that the Earth orbits, 93,000,000 miles)... Lovely distinctive colour clearly visible in any small telescope!

To see Pluto, you would need a telescope of at least 10" (250mm) diameter to have much of a chance in perfect conditions, but really something like Paul Money's 14" (355mm) diameter telescope would help to be sure. 

Pluto skulks around the Sun just once in 248 Earth years at a brightness of around magnitude 13. Now that Pluto has been demoted from planet status, it's basically just another asteroid that I haven't seen!  The asteroids that comprise the Kuyper Belt are dark and very faint.  Beyond that there is the Oort cloud, where the comets reside, and yet beyond that is the realm of the dark planetoids that, unbelievably, goes out to about 300 Astronomical Units! Ten times further out than Neptune and half way to the nearest star! 

Note: In a strange twist, although the asteroids out at the 300AU distance may orbit the Sun, there is the probability that Alpha Centauri is the brighter at times! The absolute magnitude of the Sun is 0.45 magnitues dimmer, at +4.83, than Alpha Centauri which is +4.38 at the distance of these 'deep space wanderers'. The absolute magnitude scale allows brightness comparisons between stars by working out their brightness when viewed from a set distance of 10 parsecs, 32.6 light years.

Pluto was discovered because of irregularities in the orbit of Uranus that couldn't be explained by the mass of Neptune alone.  These irregularities prompted the search for an extra-Neptunian body that could be responsible - And ultimately to the discovery of Pluto.  It turns out that Pluto is nowhere near large enough to have had any discernable effect on Uranus or even Neptune. From research done by the team at JPL, operating the probe 'Voyager II', Neptune was found to be quite massive anough to have made the Uranus errors check out after all!  So, Pluto was discovered entirely because of an estimation error!  There are many thousands of Pluto sized bodies out at that distance and pluto is just the one that was discovered first.  In a way, Pluto is no more special than Ceres!  In other ways it is a very strange world, almost a double-planet with a very close and large moon, Charon.

Note: Pluto was discovered in 1930 by 'private means' from Percival Lowell's observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, by Clyde Tombaugh, a young astronomy student employed specifically for the task. Lowell was remembered in the naming of the body. It is touching to note that the symbol for Pluto is a 'P' and an 'L' joined together. This suggests 'PLuto' but is also the initials of Percival Lowell. 

Lowell is mainly, and unfairly, remebered for his misguided thoughts on Martian canals. He was in fact a very passionate and skilled observer who deservs to be remembered for his not inconsiderable contribution to astronomy - Not least, for starting the search that resulted in the discovery of Pluto!

Comets:

Comets are another object class that I had to wait ten years to see.  In March 1973, the news on TV covered the discovery of Comet Kohoutek. The ten year old me tried to see it, but I did not manage to spot the visitor.  From then on I read many astronomy books on those many nights when getting out under the black and twinkly was impossible, due to cloud cover and rain in the north west of England. What I learned whilst doing that research, is that half the books will tell you a year that they were discovered or last seen, and the rest will tell you how long their orbital period is... But never the twain shall meet, it seems!  So, I had no idea of when any particular comet would again grace our skies, all apart from comet Halley, of course, which everyone knew would return in 1985/86. I settled in for a long wait!

Then, as a complete surprise, in 1983, Comet IRAS–Araki–Alcock (formal designation C/1983 H1, formerly 1983 VII) made it's pass by the Earth and there was sufficient location coverage on the BBC to be able to spot it. And spot it I did, on May 10th 1983.  It was a close pass by the Earth, just 4 million km distant (For a long time, the closest known pass of any comet - On October 14th 2024, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS passed by the Earth at just under 3m km distance.)

This particular comet was co-discovered by the well known astronomers George Alcock (UK) and Genichi Araki (Japan) and the team supporting the operation of 'IRAS' (The Infra-Red Astronomy Satellite). Comet IRAS, as it was generally known, was passing close to the star Kochab, beta Ursae Minoris (The little bear) on the night I first saw it, and was clearly visible to the unaided eye for several nights. It passed Dubhe and Merak, 'the Pointers', on the eleventh of May and then moved down through the back legs of Ursa Major. (Ursa Major is a constellation which actually looks a bit like what it's supposed to be!)  I also observed IRAS through my 50mm zoom binoculars and plotted its position on a chart for several nights in a row, thanks to an  unusual run of five clear nights!  My first comet didn't have a tail and appeared as a fuzzy ball of light, rapidly moving against the background stars night by night.

Note: I say 'rapidly', but comets don't 'whoosh' through the sky at all, they are visible for several nights or even weeks, in the case of Hale-Bopp (pic at top). Neither do their tails stream behind them, they point away from the Sun throughout the orbit. So, when the comet is moving away from the Sun, the tail goes first!

Comet IRAS-Araki–Alcock precipitated the first time I appeared in print, for public consumption, concerning astronomical events. Following my first observation of 'IRAS', I stayed up nearly all night, while I wrote to my local newspaper, the Blackpool Gazzette, about my experience.  I got a couple of hours sleep then took the information in person to the Gazette office in town. I included information and a location map. My comments were printed, but the finder chart was not.

Unfortunately for me, the IRAS scientist that discovered the comet was married to a local teacher, and his story took up most of the newspaper article. My information was tacked on at the end. Nevertheless, I was mentioned by name, and this was my first foray into public information about astronomy.  Of course, the SuperCooper Telescope Help website represents my magnum opus on the subject.

Picture: My original observation of the path of 'IRAS' (The green line) Recorded in my copy of 'Star and Planet Spotting' by Peter Lancaster Brown. (My first proper astronomy atlas and reference book, purchased on the 3rd of May, 1976. I know this date because I wrote it on the inside of the front cover!  Previously I had read many library books, but this brilliant book was the first one I had bought for myself, and, as you can see, I still have it.)

There have been several comets since then: The disappointment of Comet Halley in the mid 1980s, a tailless apparition, which could barely be seen without optical aid.  The fantastic Hale-Bopp in 1997, with its two tails and beautiful bright showing over several weeks (See pic at top of section). The Comets: Hyakutake, NEAT, McNought, Lovejoy, Holmes, and Neowise have all passed by with different brightnesses and appearances. Some requiring binoculars, some seen without optical aid, some coloured green!  Of all those, in all those years, only Hale-Bopp and, for a day or so, Neowise, presented anything like the sort of view I expected of a comet!

Historical Note: Edmund Halley used to pronounce his own name 'Hawlee'. In the 21st century the convention is to pronounce his name to rhyme with Valley and NOT to rhyme with Bailey, as was the case in general public parlance in the 20th century.

The best telescopes to observe comets in are short focus Newtonians.  Those with focal ratios of around f5 do particularly well with their wide fields of view and good light grasp.  10x50 binoculars are also very good for sweeping up a comet's position.  Many comets look similar to a globular cluster, eg. M13. Few have much of a tail, and fewer still are bright enough to be remarkable in our skies.

PIC: My image of Comet Holmes as observed from my 'observatory' in Tias, Lanzarote, October 25th, 2007. Observation made with my wedding present, a SkyWatcher Explorer 150P, f5 parabolic Newtonian.

I was observing with a group of astronomers at HAW99 and we saw three starlike lights, about a degree by two degrees apart, moving steadily across the sky in a triangle formation. As we watched they never deviated or changed their formation. They were obviously satellites, but the formation was puzzling. One of the members of our group informed us that it was American military GPS satellites. They actually orbit in formation to provide an exact check on their position, this allows their military grade GPS to be accurate to under two metres!

Man-Made Satellites:

Observing satellites is fun for everyone!

Man-made satellites can be seen without optical aid as 'stars' that pass through the night sky.  There are many thousands and hardly an observing session goes by without seeing one or two. 

Sometimes they pass into the Earth's shadow and disappear from view. Other times they brighten and fade as the different parts reflect the sunlight differently. They are interesting to spot and all the more fun if you know which one it is or when to look!

One impressive selection are the 'Starlink' satellites. They can be seen in an impressive line of forty or so as they pass overhead. They can be found by looking up your location with a finder web-page .  Many astronomers think they will spoil the night sky, but they are very impressive!   I found this GIF to give you some idea. 

There is, of course, a webpage that allows you to find out when the Starlink Satellites will be visible for you:

Here> FIND STARLINK  (You will need to set up your location.)

Another impressive object is the International Space Station (ISS). This can be very bright as it passes over. A single satellite is about the size of a Ford Transit Van, but the ISS is the size of a football field! Size is 109m x 80m x 88m and weighs 450 tonnes.

Naturally, there is a finder website for the ISS too:

Here> ISS PASSES  (You will need to set up your location on the top right of the page.)

The Closest Thing to Life, Jim!

In 1978 I was observing the full Moon with my recently acquired vintage AE Optics 6" Newtonian and saw tiny blobs with little wiggly appendages moving slowly down the Moon's disc.  It looked for all the world like Space Invaders!  I thought about it for a minute whilst I looked at the oddity with interest. After a few confused seconds I refocussed slightly to try focusing on the blobs, and discovered that it was a skein of geese flying across the Moon at very high altitude.

The effect came about because the geese were just out of focus. The Moon, at infinity, was in focus, the geese at about 20,000 feet (6,000m), were not. With the geese out of focus they appeared as eerie wiggling diamond shaped blobs moving slowly down the Moon. 

Thank goodness I thought to refocus and discovered the truth before they moved off the Moon's disc, or this might be a very different section!

Pic: A mock up of the view with the Moon in focus (left) and the Geese in focus (right) In this case, the geese were moving across the Moon's disc 'downwards', as seen in the telescope. They took about five minutes to fly across the disc, there were about fifty in all.  I have never seen this since! Though I have seen birds fly across at lower altitude, which is much quicker! My first reaction wasn't, "Someone else is on our Moon!", but to think about it carefully and solve the question, "What could it be that I am seeing?".

Note for the sceptical: The Guinness Book of Records has certified geese flying at an altitude of over 30,000 feet (9,000m).  The birdies on the video below were much lower!

My personal instrumentation: Featuring throughout this website!

Pic - The first telescope I ever used. HOC 30x30 Drawtube Telescope (1968 - date!) 

6x45 (Brand unknown, Grandma bought) 'Opera glasses' (1975-1978)

Prinz 15-60x Astral 60mm Telescope - AZ Refractor (1976 - 1978)

*Borrowed Ken Porter's Home made 6" f7 - EQ parabolic Newtonian (1977-1978)

AE Optics 6" f8 EQ - parabolic Newtonian (1978-1981)

Hilkinson 20x70 - Japanese Binoculars (1980-1983)

(Unknown make) 10-60x50 - zoom binoculars (1983 - 1985)

Skywatcher 150P EQ3-2  - parabolic Newtonian (A joint wedding present from my wife, Jay Cooper and Paul Money, April 17th 2004)

I.R.Vision 8x40 - Binoculars (2005-2017)

Swift Ranger II 10x50 - binoculars (2016-date)

SkyWatcher 127SkyMax EQ3 SkyScan2001 - Maksutov-Cassegrain (2017-2020)

SkyWatcher 100ED-PRO EQ3 SkyScan 2001- ED Refractor (2018-2020)

SkyWatcher 200P EQ3 - parabolic Newtonian (2019 - 2020)

SkyWatcher 130P AZ-GTI - parabolic GoTo Newtonian (2020-2020)

(Look at those last four - As I said, 2020 has a lot to answer for!)

SkyWatcher ST120 f5 AZ3 - Refractor (2022-2023)

SkyWatcher 150PL Classic - Dobsonian (2023-2024 - Sold when we moved house in July)

It may interest you to discover that I don't have any telescopes at present!  Following a recent house move (Yes, another!) I haven't acquired any!

Note: Since 2016 I have traded about 450 telescopes of all types, (but I don't regard them as 'mine', so thank goodness I don't have to list them!)  The end date of ownership for the telescopes above is usually a sale (But I don't regard those as 'trades'). The 60mm Astral Telescope was cannibalised for the project of my Astronomy qualification in 1978.

* Kenneth Porter was secretary of the Lytham St.Anne's Astronomical Society. I was a member of the society from 1976 to 1981. As a measure of my enthusiasm I travelled alone, by bus, the six miles to Lytham St.Anne's College of Further Education from fourteen years of age. Ken was a good mentor and was keen to pass on his astronomy knowledge. Ken also ran the Astronomy 'O' Level astronomy course at the college. While I was studying for the qualification I borrowed a home made 6" f7 Newtonian from the college (the one Ken had made). This was a lovely instrument. I passed my 'O' level in 1978. Then I had to give the telescope back. Feeling the loss, I bought myself a very good vintage AE Optics 6" f8 Newtonian. I had it for two wonderful years before I sold my large telescopes when I moved to Manchester in 1981 (I seem to have always had a pair of binoculars to use on the night sky!)