Observing Neptune and Uranus – July 2009

I woke at 0430 in the early morning of Friday the 3rd of July and thought of a recent post on the Starynights Yahoo group on observing Neptune. I dug the page out of the Sky & Telescope website that shows where Uranus and Neptune are for 2009, and went out into the front driveway. Venus and Mars were down the street to the East and Jupiter was above my neighbor's house across the street (south). The lights of nearby San Antonio did not obscure the majority of the stars in Pegasus, but none of the stars in the circlet of the fish between the square and Jupiter were visible by naked eye.

I pulled my XT10 out of the back of my camper shell covered pick-up and set it up with a 10x50 finder scope. Before long I had identified Neptune just to the north of Jupiter as a blueish dot in my 10mm Radian eyepiece (120X).

I then set about finding the circlet in my finder scope. Before long I had it identified and two of the stars led me to the pale green disc of Uranus.

It was the second time I have seen Uranus and my first sighting of Neptune. I put the scope back in its case and dropped back into bed at about 0545. Great morning! It will be fun to show these off at star parties as they get closer to evening events as the summer moves into the fall.