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@JonathanC i think i saw a planet tonight. it looked like a star but it was brighter. i believe in planets now.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@AliceinWonderland If you look at it through binoculars or even a modest telescope, provided you can hold it steadily enough, it will show as a definite disc. Stars are so far away that even the brightest of them in the night sky are still just points of light.
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Once, my girlfriend and I attended a public evening hosted by an astronomical society at their 21" telescope, built in the grounds of a house well away from any street lights.
This let us see Jupiter and Saturn with our own eyes, through the telescope that magnified the planets enough for us to see their main features. Though the image was in monochrome, Jupiter's "Great Red Spot" was clearly visible (it's thought to be a gigantic storm that's been raging for an unknown time since before astronomers first saw it). Saturn was obligingly at an angle sufficient for us to see over half-way round the beautiful rings that orbit it. It was quite a moving experience.
(Astronomers don't normally look at objects through the eyepiece, but fit cameras and spectroscopes to the telescope instead. I don't know if the biggest professional telescopes even have eyepieces!)
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Once, my girlfriend and I attended a public evening hosted by an astronomical society at their 21" telescope, built in the grounds of a house well away from any street lights.
This let us see Jupiter and Saturn with our own eyes, through the telescope that magnified the planets enough for us to see their main features. Though the image was in monochrome, Jupiter's "Great Red Spot" was clearly visible (it's thought to be a gigantic storm that's been raging for an unknown time since before astronomers first saw it). Saturn was obligingly at an angle sufficient for us to see over half-way round the beautiful rings that orbit it. It was quite a moving experience.
(Astronomers don't normally look at objects through the eyepiece, but fit cameras and spectroscopes to the telescope instead. I don't know if the biggest professional telescopes even have eyepieces!)