Solar System Observing

Articles about how to understand, find and see solar system objects including planets, the Moon, the Sun, asteroids, meteors, and comets with binoculars, telescopes, and the naked eye.

A Look Back at Comet Hale-Bopp

March 27, 2020 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) after sunset near the constellation Cassiopeia on March 27, 1997, three days after its closest approach to Earth (Credit: Brian Ventrudo)

At any particular time, a half-dozen or more comets are visible with a good-sized amateur telescope. But a bright comet is a once-in-a-decade event at best, and a Great Comet, one that grows bright enough to capture wide attention, is rarer still. Recently there have been two Great Comets visible to observers in the southern hemisphere, Comet McNaught in 2007 and Comet Lovejoy in 2011. But it’s been a long drought for stargazers in the northern hemisphere, where no spectacular comet has been seen since 1997 when the mighty Comet C/1995 O1, better known as Comet Hale-Bopp, barreled in from the outer solar system and put on one of the most watched celestial shows in modern history [Read more…] about A Look Back at Comet Hale-Bopp

Share This:

Exploring a Comet, Very Close Up

September 9, 2019 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

The Comet from Christian Stangl on Vimeo.

The Rosetta spacecraft made its final maneuver around the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67p) in 2016 and made a controlled hard landing. Rosetta had accompanied the comet for more than 2 years, measured valuable scientific data, brought a lander on to the comet’s surface and took vast numbers of pictures.

In 2017 the European Space Agency released over 400,000 images from the Rosetta mission. Based on these images, motion designer Christian Stangl and composer Wolfgang Stangl worked together to create this short (but quite astonishing) film.
The sequences are digitally enhanced real-footage from the probe.

Watch the beauty of an active alien body, far out in the dephts of our solar system.

Share This:

The Disappearing Great Red Spot

July 26, 2019 By Joe Bergeron Filed Under: Solar System

Jupiter and the cyclonic feature known as the Great Red Spot, lower right, in 2019. New dissipative activity is shrinking and may be destabilizing this famous feature in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Image credit: Anthony Wesley.

Second only to the rings of Saturn, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS) is probably the most iconic planetary feature in the solar system. Unlike the rings, which aren’t going away any time soon, recent observations of an apparent unraveling of the GRS suggest big changes in this iconic feature, if not its impending demise [Read more…] about The Disappearing Great Red Spot

Share This:

See the ‘Craters of Apollo 11’

July 18, 2019 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

The astronaut Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin at Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969.

As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the still astonishing Apollo 11 moon landing, we backyard stargazers can also get in on the fun (indeed many of us grizzled amateur astronomers can trace our interest in the night sky to the space program of the 1960s). With a modest telescope and good seeing, nearly anyone with a little observing experience can see the region of the Moon where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin briefly walked, and observe the three tiny craters named for the two famous moonwalkers and their crew mate Michael Collins who remained alone in lunar orbit to pilot the Apollo 11 command module [Read more…] about See the ‘Craters of Apollo 11’

Share This:

Guide to Observing Saturn in 2019

July 4, 2019 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

This composite image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 6 June 2018, shows the ringed planet Saturn with six of its 62 known moons.

Many casual observers get hooked on amateur astronomy after a first look at Saturn through a telescope. More than a few have looked through my small refractor on a night of good seeing and asked of Saturn, “Is it real?”

Oh, it’s real, all right. And incredibly beautiful… the color, the proportions, the apparent 3D perspective of this grand icy world. It is arguably the finest sight accessible with a small telescope. The planet reaches opposition on July 9, 2019 and will remain bright and large in a telescope over the next few months. Here’s how to find it and see it in a small telescope.

Share This: