We saw that bright planet in the west (Venus), now come see live video of Saturn! 5-15-12 *Thanks for watching, replay on page 2*

Give me a moment and I will double the optical magnification on Saturn. This will require refocusing.

I read this on another thread some weeks back when I asked that very question about Saturn.

Thanks for the heads up.



My GOD...it's full of STARS....

Wow, Saturn looks cool!

Venus ?

Saturn, Cool! Can you zoom in a bit?

Can you zoom in any closer on Saturn?

I will try to upload some pics i took of it up
North

Yep...that's pretty kewl..thanks for the zoom!

Beautiful!

I bet Jupiter looks awesome through that :)

Magnificent! Thank you for sharing Venus and Saturn with us.

Hello Saturn!

Amazingly beautiful!

Like I said, I'm a man of my word, and I can admit when I'm wrong.

I'm glad to be wrong on this specific subject.

Anyways, thanks again for the stream.

One word, awesome!

Last Edited by ****D4RK*ST4R**** on 05/15/2012 10:14 PM

funny i called my son in to venus....then i opened the feed....
"dad venus does not have a ring...that's saturn
i must read the title better ha ha

cool thanks mut

Blue screen of death, will be back online momentarily.

Got you too huh?




lol.

Back online now.

Thank you for sharing and explaining. Great job.

[link to theagenda.tvo.org]
[link to www.youtube.com]

My first time seeing Saturn!!!!!!!

Happy

Thanks

Kick ass.


Yer gonna end up starting a GLP astronomy club.


I love looking to the heavens.

Astromut,
I must admit I was a bit off looking through my telescope and realizing only a sliver of Venus was creating this brilliant light. As a casual sky enthusiast I wasn't aware of the different phases Venus. I've never seen a crescent planet and to be honest I got a bit excited.

Thanks for the explanation.

Can ya dummy down the May 20th hype next?

I hope so, glad you enjoyed it. Clouds are starting to roll in, I'm going to go ahead and call it a night.

Here's the recording showing Venus through the main scope, then with the camcorder to show how its bokeh appearance in an out-of-focus camcorder does not actually tell you anything about Venus' true appearance, then again in the main scope before switching over to the widefield scope where Venus was over-exposed to show how it's not actually a "plasma light ship," but just looks like a big ball of light when you over-expose it, the size of which depends on the extent of over-exposure, then back to the main scope again to show the true shape with proper exposure, then upping that to over-exposure to prove that indeed the "plasma light ship" pictures are just over-exposed Venus, then finally after it set in the main scope and faded I switched back to the widefield scope ridding piggyback on top of the main scope where you saw it setting over the roof line. Somewhere around 40 minutes into the recording you can start to see Saturn at the equivalent of about 200 magnification, then about 15 minutes later you can see Saturn at the equivalent of about 400 magnification.
[link to www.twitch.tv]

Last Edited by Astromut on 05/15/2012 11:42 PM

It's a surprise to most people. Here's that formula I promised for calculating the magnitude of Venus.

The original phase coefficient determined by Danjon some 63 years ago was this:
V(1,0)+ delta m(i) = -4.29 + 0.09(i/100)+ 2.39(i/100)^2 - 0.65(i/100)^3
where the formula for the visual magnitude of the planet is
V = V(1,0) + 5 log10(rd) + delta m(i)
V(1,0) = the magnitude of the planet as seen from 1 AU and a phase angle of 0°
r = distance of planet from sun
d = distance of planet from earth
delta m(i) = phase coefficient for the phase angle "i"
More refined solutions were determined by Knuckles and Irvine in the 60's, but the basic premise is the same and shows the interplay of phase angle and distance. This formula was empirically determined by Danjon from 335 observations spanning 10 years.

Last Edited by Astromut on 05/15/2012 11:45 PM

cool stuff astro. Looks like i missed the live broadcast. Venus is mind blowing this year!

Here's an hour of just close-up Saturn footage. If you skip forward several minutes at a time through the video you'll quickly notice the effect of field rotation on the apparent "tilt" of Saturn. This is why you can't just assume a given image of Saturn shows its true orientation. A comparison image taken with the same equipment at about the same time with the surrounding stars is necessary in order to calculate an astrometric solution and measure the true orientation.
[link to www.twitch.tv]

so... You want a cookie?

I was going to say something really mean like:

Really? You guys act like your doing something ground breaking here. It's just a telescope looking at the same shit that's been there for how long?


But I decided not too...