Astronomy is warmer on the television ….. in The odd entries from life …….

Each year the BBC has a three night series ‘Stargazing’ it’s the best three nights of television, the program is presented by Professor Brian Cox and Dara O Briain an Irish comedian who has a fascination with maths. This program is buzzing with well-educated people, Dr Lucie Green, Liz Bonnin, Dr Matt Taylor and Sky at Night’s Chris Lintott; and this year’s guest is Buzz Aldrin the second man to walk on the Moon.

In previous years it has been in late January but this year it is on now for the Solar Eclipse tomorrow, 20th March. Across the UK it will be a partial eclipse, if you went up to the Faroe Islands or parts of Norway you would see a total eclipse, as for me I’ve made a mistake as I will be travelling while our partial eclipse happens!

After tonight’s program I dragged my telescope, a rear event! Once it was out on the patio I had to extend the tripod, then I have zero the equatorial mount on Polaris the north star, once that is dun I can swing the telescope round to find Jupiter in the small finger scope, then play with the telescope’s slow-motion controls until I have Jupiter in the eye piece.

To find Jupiter I had an 25mm eye piece, that gave me a view of Jupiter and the four large moons quite small, then I changed to a 10mm eye piece, now Jupiter and the moons near filled the view, now I was quite busy with the slow-motion controls, using then I could keep the group in the view. The Moons were points in a line, from the left far out from Jupiter was Callisto, then close in were Io and then Europa, and just on the other side of Jupiter was Ganymede; Jupiter was a small white disk with two grey bands.

Many things seen through a telescope are black and white, the low amount of light doesn’t activate the cones in the eye, the rods are more sensitive but you can only see in monochrome.

It’s some time since I’ve used my telescope, Jupiter was high in the sky so I used a chare as the viewing end was quite low to the ground, reaching the slow-motion controls was difficult, could my arms have shrunk! Each time I adjusted the position or the focus Jupiter and it retinue of moons did a little dance, keeping my eye just off the eye piece the dance subsided.

Astronomy is warmer on the television, but to see the planets with your own eye is rather good!

Last updated March 19, 2015