Uranus and Neptune from Singapore

[lotsafruit]

Wow so nice! I hope to see them visually next time, if I can find them. Are they visually blue also like in your photo?

[ebeyonder]

Gavin, I may just try Pluto under the Mersing skies! If I take a widefield shot of the region it's in, and then return 2 hrs later, I should be able to detect movement right? Even if the focal length is 400mm?

lotsafruit - I think both were quite whitish using a 24mm EP (125x). With 5mm (600x - maybe too much), Neptune appeared very faintly bluish but Uranus was still whitish. I could not detect any green in Uranus. At 24mm, viewing the first time round, I had a hard time distinguishing both planets from their surrounding stars. But second time round, it was easier. At 5mm, they were very apparent as discs.

I managed to catch them a second time this week. Second time was easier than first because recognising them for what they were using the 24mm was easier:





Shot with ASI120MC, 3x barlow, Mewlon 250, no enlargement but cropped

[starfinder]

Yihan - very nice photos!

Regarding your question, I've just examined the field around Pluto with a planearium program (SkySafari). It appears that even with a 1 deg field of view (1000mm), 2 hrs is not quite sufficient to detect movement. It needs about a day. But perhaps you could try to see if you could detect movement between the frames.

[ebeyonder]

Thanks Gavin! Like that I may try shooting at about 420mm a day apart. Surely a day should be enough?

[starfinder]

Yes, a day would be good enough. This appears from simulations on SkySafari.

[tanweeho]

Like to bump up this thread because I hope to catch Neptune which just passed opposition few days ago. I use a nexstar 8" evo yesterday and visually spot a star brighter than the rest. But I am not sure whether that was Neptune as it did not appear blue-ish to me. Hope to catch Uranus in another 2 months which will be near opposition. Heard Uranus is easier to spot than Neptune as the former will look like a full-stop.

[Airconvent]

I previously managed to catch both planets on my Meade ETC105 years back and that was not even at Opposition. Used alot of barlow (pushing it to an insane x600) and very patient balancing of the scope ! As expected from a 4" Aperture, I only managed to get a blurred disk with no details but the bluish and greenish colours were distinct, so there is no confusing it with something else. Samuel (Harlequin2902) was next to me with his Nexstar 4 and he was doing a Meade vs Celestron comparison! You can still see his review on Cloudynights.com

http://www.cloudynights.com/page/articl ... -uhtc-r757