Star gazing

Some of the latest images from NASA

 

NASA's latest mission to the outer solar system treated us to some amazing images this past week, asJuno swept just 2,600 miles (4,200 km) above the Jovian cloudtops.

“Early post-flyby telemetry indicates that everything worked as planned and Juno is firing on all cylinders,” says project manager Rick Nybakken (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in a recentNASA press release.


A composite Juno image of Jupiter's north pole, as assembled by S&T Imaging Editor Sean Walker. He writes, "Junocam uses a drift-scan camera, and the images come down in strips that have to be assembled per color. There's additional smear due to the planet’s rapid rotation, which I corrected using distortion tools in Photoshop."
NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / S. Walker

Closest passage, called perijove,occurred on August 27th at 13:44 Universal Time (UT). At that moment Juno was moving at an amazing 130,000 mph (58 km per second) — fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in just under 2 hours. For comparison, satellites in geostationary orbit are almost nine times farther from Earth than Juno was from Jupiter last weekend.

Juno is currently in a pair of preliminary 53.5-day-long capture orbits. It will fire its main engine one final time, on October 19th, before settling down in a series of much tighter, 14-day orbits to conduct its scientific observations.

This was also the closest non-destructive pass of Jupiter made by any spacecraft ever. To date, only two spacecraft have taken the plunge into Jupiter's dense atmosphere: the Galileo atmospheric probe (1995) and its companion orbiter (2003).

Launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Juno made a pass near Earth on October 9, 2013, and entered polar orbit around Jupiter on July 5, 2016 (July 4 Eastern Daylight Time).

The mission's goals are to probe the composition of Jupiter and measure its polar magnetosphere, magnetic and gravitational field. For example, we may soon know if Jupiter has a solid rocky core, or instead if its center is simply a super-dense ball of metallic liquid hydrogen.


Juno looks down on Jupiter's south pole on its outbound leg.
NASA / JPL / SWRI / MSSS

Juno also holds the distinction of being the only spacecraft to operate in the outer solar system using solar panels instead of plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs).

August 27th marked the first of 36 close flybys planned before the mission ends in February 2018 with entry into the Jovian atmosphere. To carry out its mission, Juno must thread the intense radiation belts surrounding Jupiter on successive polar passes. All instruments came through this first pass unscathed, though Juno is expected to suffer from radiation degradation on each consecutive pass.

Brave New Gas Giant
And going into this U.S. Labor Day weekend, NASA released some stunning closeup images from the flyby. Just downloading the data collected via the Deep Space Network during the 6-hour passage as Juno transited Jupiter from pole to pole took a day and a half.

Already, Juno is revealing the giant planet's secrets. “First glimpse of Jupiter's north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” said principal investigator Scott Bolton (Southwest Research Institute-San Antonio) in a recent NASA press release. “It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms.”


Aurora as seen by JIRAM over Jupiter's south pole in the infrared range of 3.3 to 3.6 microns.
NASA / JPL / SWRI / ASI / INAF

Indeed, as seen by JunoCam, the spacecraft's visible-light camera, it scarcely looks like the same belt-festooned planet that we're used to seeing. Jupiter's poles are dappled with swirling storms and depressions, many casting conspicuous shadows. Unlike at Saturn, no "polar hexagon" graces Jupiter's poles.

Juno's Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), supplied by the Italian Space Agency was also fired up for this pass. As expected, JIRAM gave researchers the first-ever view of Jupiter's southern aurorae. Its infrared observations, made from 3.3 to 3.6 microns in wavelength, revealing a flurry of hydrogen ions energized by charged particles cascading in from the planet's magnetosphere. This angry, swirling abyss is a dramatically new perspective, as Jupiter's southern pole is unfavorably placed for observation from Earth.

Check out this amazing video dropped last Friday of JIRAM scanning Jupiter in the infrared:


Juno's Radio/Plasma Wave Experiment also recorded the ethereal sounds of radio emissions during the pass. Although Jovian radio outbursts have been known since the 1950s, we've never recorded them at such close range.


Plenty of Juno Science to Come
Jupiter reaches conjunction on the far side of the Sun later this month, on September 26th, marking a week of limited contact between Juno and Earth. But once the spacecraft returns to perijove again on October 19th and powers itself into its final orbit, the science results will start to flow. The best is yet to come. For example, JunoCam is expected to deliver some of the highest resolution images of the Jovian cloud tops yet.

There's also a concerted effort for Earthbound amateur astronomers to monitor Jupiter as a backup for Juno's observations.

One thing Juno won't examine up close are the Jovian moons. Due to the nature of its mission, Juno orbits Jupiter far out of its moons' orbital planes. We'll have to wait until the launch of Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE), the next mission to Jupiter in the pipeline, for more moon pictures.


Polar perspectives of Jup

 

"An amazing mission of cometary exploration is about to come to aclimactic end next week, as the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft comes to rest on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on September 30.

Launched on March 2, 2004, from Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 rocket, it took Rosetta 10 years to arrive at Comet 67P. This epic journey included flybys of Mars, Earth and asteroids 2867 Steins and 21 Lutetia, after which Rosetta was placed in a risky hibernation mode for several years. Reawakened on January 20, 2014, Rosetta successfully phoned home and got to work.

Thanks to Rosetta, Comet 67P is now arguably the most studied comet in the history of planetary science.


Don't Call it an Impact
Up until now, Rosetta has kept a good distance from Comet 67P, but in its last days, the final orbits of Rosetta will bring it as close as a kilometer from the surface of the comet.

Rosetta will execute its low-speed collision maneuver 20 kilometers above the comet's surface late on the evening of Thursday, September 29th. Contact is set to occur later the next day during a 20-minute window centered on 10:40 Universal Time (UT) — Comet 67P is 40 light-minutes distant, so it will take that long for ESA to receive . Rosetta is expected to come to rest on the comet at a velocity of about 1 meter per second. That's about 3.6 kilometers per hour (2.2 mph, equivalent to a slow walking pace).


Rosetta's final week orbiting Comet 67P.
ESA

“We have observations/measurements of the comet at all scales, from kilometers down to 100s of nanometers and this is giving us a wonderful insight into how the comet was created from the interstellar dust,” says project scientist Matt Taylor (ESA) “We have shown that the comet was formed from two smaller similar cometesimals that collided at low velocity.”

The Ma'at region that Rosetta is targeting is dotted with several active sink hole-style pits, measuring about 100 meters wide by 50 meters deep (imagine a football field-sized hole as deep as a typical water tower is high). Researchers plan to bring Rosetta down on a smooth plain between the Ma'at 02 and Ma'at 03 depressions, in hopes of peering inside them.


Rosetta's final home, imaged by the OSIRIS narrow angle camera from a distance of 28 kilometers.
ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA

Pits on Comet 67P show strange meter-sized nodules sometimes called "goosebumps." Scientists believe these lumps could be cometesimals which merged together to create the comet during the origin of the early solar system.

Instruments will continue to measure gas, dust, and plasma all the way down during Rosetta’s descent, including during the 2 kilometers closest to the comet, where some particles and ions in the coma begin accelerating toward the comet's tail. “This is something we have NEVER done with Rosetta,” Taylor says.

The mission team christened the Ma'at 02 pit as Deir el-Medina, after an ancient pit in Egypt that proved to be a modern archaeological treasure trove.

Science and the Final Days of Rosetta
The Rosetta mission provides proof that big projects spanning decades can pay off. We've learned about the dynamic processes on comets that turn them into beautiful celestial spectacles.

Rosetta has also shown that water ice on Comet 67P contains three times more deuterium than water on Earth, disputing primordial comets as the source of Earth's water. Rosetta did, however, discover glycine and other complex compounds on Comet 67P, offering a possible source for delivering organic compounds to early Earth.

And just within a month of the mission's end, Rosetta amazed us once again on September 5th, as the team released images of the Philae lander wedged in a dark crack on the comet's surface. This answered a lingering mystery as to just why Philae had a such rough time phoning home, as it received little sunlight to charge its batteries.

Will we hear from Rosetta again, if it survives surface contact? “No, the spacecraft will be commanded to not try to re-contact Earth,” Says Taylor. “As Jim Morrison once said: 'This is the end... beautiful friend.'”

Still it's fun to wonder just what the final fate of Rosetta and Philae might be over the coming millennia. Discovered in 1969, Comet 67P orbits the Sun once every 6.44 years, its distance ranging from 1.2 to 5.7 astronomical units (a.u., the distance between Earth the Sun). Most likely, the twin lobes of Comet 67P will one day break apart, and perhaps, Philae and Rosetta will once again drift free and derelict around the Sun.

Congrats to ESA and the Rosetta team on an amazing and inspiring mission, as Rosetta joins Philae on a final strange and exotic resting place on the surface of a comet."

 

A really good night of clear skies so I'm having a wander through the Milky Way. I live on the fringe of a small town where the light pollution is evident but not as bad as a city. The light pollution measuring scale is known as the Bortle Scale, with 1 being completely dark skies and 10 being like standing in a brightly lit square where, basically you can't see beyond the square.
So my area is around 3 to 4 on the Bortle scale, and while you can see the major stars with the naked eye it takes a while [40 minutes], until your eyes adjust, to see at least a tiny proportion more of the stars you would see without Light Pollution. Even in the pitch black of the Observatory it takes a good 20 minutes before my eyes have adjusted to see more of the stars. But when you put your eye to the telescope it's just staggering to see just how many Stars, Galaxies, Nebula, you can see. It's even more staggering when I remind myself that I'm only seeing an estimated several Thousand, Million, Million, Million, Million, Million, Billion, Billion, Billion, Billion, Billion of a Billionth of what is out there in our Universe, and that the light. from what I can see. has taken, in some cases, several Million Light Years to get to me, and that in a Light Year Light travels around 5,879 Trillion miles. It's going to be a late night/early morning for me.

 

Rosetta’s Grand Finale


ESA's historic Rosetta mission to explore Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko ended in dramatic fashion on September 30th.

View from Rosetta's Controlled Descent
From NASA: "A new image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft shortly before its controlled impact into the comet's surface on Sept. 30, 2016. Confirmation of the end of the mission arrived at ESA's European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, at 4:19 a.m. PDT (7:19 a.m. EDT / 1:19 p.m. CEST) with the loss of signal upon impact."


The OSIRIS narrow-angle camera aboard the Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft captured this image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on September 30, 2016, from an altitude of about 10 miles (16 kilometers) above the surface during the spacecraft's controlled descent. The image scale is about 12 inches (30 centimeters) per pixel and the image itself measures about 2,000 feet (614 meters) across.
ESA

Watch the end of the Rosetta mission:
The European Space Agency and NASA Television aired the conclusion to the Rosetta mission. The Rosetta mission will end with the controlled decent of the spacecraft onto the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 7:19 a.m. EDT on September 30th.
Rosetta's Finale Ends an Amazing Mission

An artistic portrayal of the moment when ESA's Rosetta spacecraft comes into contact with the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
ESA / ATG medialab

An amazing mission of cometary exploration came to a climactic end, as the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft came to rest onComet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkoon September 30th.

Launched on March 2, 2004, from Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane V rocket, it took Rosetta 10 years to arrive at Comet 67P. This epic journey included flybys of Mars, Earth, and asteroids 2867 Steins and21 Lutetia, after which Rosetta was placed in a risky hibernation mode for several years. Reawakened on January 20, 2014, Rosetta successfully phoned home and got to work.

Thanks to Rosetta, Comet 67P is now arguably the most studied comet in the history of planetary science.


Don't Call it an Impact
Until now, Rosetta has kept a good distance from Comet 67P, but in its last days, the final orbits of Rosetta brought it as close as 1 kilometer from the surface of the comet.

Rosetta executed its low-speed collision maneuver 20 km above the comet's surface late on the evening of Thursday, September 29th. Contact occured later the next day, with loss of signal confirmed at 7:19 a.m. EDT. Rosetta was expected to come to rest on the comet at a velocity of about 1 meter per second. That's about 3.6 km (2.2 miles) per hour, equivalent to a slow walking pace.


Rosetta's final week orbiting Comet 67P.
ESA

“We have observations/measurements of the comet at all scales, from kilometers down to 100s of nanometers, and this is giving us a wonderful insight into how the comet was created from the interstellar dust,” says project scientist Matt Taylor (ESA) “We have shown that the comet was formed from two smaller similar cometesimals that collided at low velocity.”

The Ma'at region that Rosetta targeted is dotted with several active sink hole-style pits, measuring about 100 m wide by 50 m deep (imagine a football field-sized hole as deep as a typical water tower is high). Researchers aimed to bring Rosetta down on a smooth plain between the Ma'at 02 and Ma'at 03 depressions, as shown in the image below, in hopes of peering inside them.


Rosetta's final home, imaged by the OSIRIS narrow angle camera from a distance of 28 kilometers.
ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA

Pits on Comet 67P show strange meter-sized nodules sometimes called "goosebumps." Scientists believe these lumps could be cometesimals which merged together to create the comet during the origin of the early solar system.

Instruments continued to measure gas, dust, and plasma all the way down during Rosetta’s descent, including during the 2 km closest to the comet, where some particles and ions in the coma begin accelerating toward the comet's tail. “This is something we have never done with Rosetta,” Taylor says.

The mission team christened the Ma'at 02 pit as Deir el-Medina, after an ancient pit in Egypt that proved to be a modern archaeological treasure trove.

Science and the Final Days of Rosetta
The Rosetta mission provides proof that big projects spanning decades can pay off. We've learned about the dynamic processes on comets that turn them into beautiful celestial spectacles.


This enhanced image from Rosetta's navigation camera shows the two lobes and neck of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Mission scientists have now confirmed that the nucleus is probably made of two bodies that stuck together.
ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM

Rosetta has also shown that water ice on Comet 67Pcontains three times more deuterium than water on Earth, a finding that rules out primordial comets as the predominant source of Earth's water. Rosetta did, however, discover glycine and other complex compounds on Comet 67P, offering a possible source for delivering organic compounds to early Earth.

And just within a month of the mission's end, Rosetta amazed us once again on September 5th, as the team released images of the Philae lander wedged in a dark crack on the comet's surface. This answered a lingering mystery as to just why Philae had a such rough time phoning home, as it received little sunlight to charge its batteries.

Will we hear from Rosetta again, if it survives surface contact? “No, the spacecraft will be commanded to not try to recontact Earth,” Says Taylor. “As Jim Morrison once said: 'This is the end . . . beautiful friend.'”

Still, it's fun to wonder just what the final fate of Rosetta and Philae might be over the coming millennia. Discovered in 1969, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko orbits the Sun every 6.44 years, its distance ranging from 1.2 to 5.7 astronomical units (a.u., the distance between Earth the Sun). Most likely, the twin lobes of Comet 67P will one day break apart, perhaps allowing Philae and Rosetta to drift free and derelict around the Sun.

Congrats to ESA and the Rosetta team on an amazing and inspiring mission, as Rosetta joins Philae on a final strange and exotic resting place on the surface of a comet.

 

"Mars orbiter locates Schiaparelli lander’s crash site




Before-and-after images of the Schiaparelli landing site taken May 29, 2016, and on Thursday show two new features attributed to the lander. A dark fuzzy marking near the top of the frame is from the impact of the Schiaparelli lander, and a bright dot lower in the image is likely the lander’s parachute. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Views from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released Friday show the crash site where Europe’s experimental Schiaparelli lander fell to the red planet’s surface from a height of several miles, leaving a distinct dark patch on the Martian landscape.

The imagery confirms the loss of the lander on its final descent Wednesday, after successfully plunging through the upper reaches of the Martian atmosphere and deploying a supersonic parachute.

MRO’s low-resolution context camera took a picture Thursday of the Schiaparelli landing site at Meridiani Planum, an expansive plain situated near the Martian equator, and revealed signs of a violent impact.

Something went wrong to cause the landing craft — about the size of a baby grand piano — to free fall from an altitude of up 13,000 feet (4 kilometers), the European Space Agency said in a statement Friday.

Mission control lost contact with Schiaparelli less than a minute before its planned touchdown, and engineers are busy analyzing the lander’s telemetry recorded and replayed by Europe’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter to determine what happened.

The data stream captured by the Trace Gas Orbiter also cut off before touchdown, but it shows the first sign of trouble came about the time Schiaparelli was supposed to jettison its parachute and the back part of its heat shield, then fire nine braking rockets to slow down for landing.

Andrea Accomazzo, head of ESA’s solar and planetary missions division, said Thursday that the data indicate the lander fired at least some of its braking rockets for three or four seconds. They were supposed to burn for around 30 seconds.

Schiaparelli’s Doppler radar, designed to feed altitude and velocity data to the lander’s guidance computer, also activated and operated for a period of time, Accomazzo said.

The image from MRO’s context camera shows two new features attributed to the Schiaparelli spacecraft, including a large dark scar spanning an estimated 50 feet (15 meters) by 130 feet (40 meters). Schiaparelli’s ground team believes it is from the high-speed impact of the lander’s main body.

A little more than a half-mile (1 kilometer) to the south, a bright spot appears in the image, likely the 39-foot-diameter (12-meter) supersonic parachute and part of Schiaparelli’s heat shield, which released from the lander just before ESA lost contact.

“Estimates are that Schiaparelli dropped from a height of between 2 and 4 kilometers (6,500 to 13,000 feet), therefore impacting at a considerable speed, greater than 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph),” ESA said in a statement Friday. “The relatively large size of the feature would then arise from disturbed surface material. It is also possible that the lander exploded on impact, as its thruster propellant tanks were likely still full.”

Schiaparelli ended up about 3.4 miles (5.4 kilometers) west of its intended touchdown target, well within the landing ellipse.


Artist’s concept illustrating the moment the Schiaparelli lander was to jettison its back shell and parachute and ignite its descent engines. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
During the last phase of the descent, Schiaparelli’s hydrazine-fueled landing rockets were supposed to slow the spacecraft from around 120 mph (200 kilometers per hour) to a walking pace at an altitude 6 feet (2 meters) above the surface. At that point, measurements from the lander’s radar altimeter would tell the thrusters to shut down, and Schiaparelli was to fall to the surface cushioned by a crushable carbon-fiber structure.

The battery-powered lander was expected to function for at least four days, collecting weather data on the surface and returning imagery taken by a descent camera during the landing sequence.

MRO’s higher-resolution HiRISE camera will be tasked to get a closer look at Schiaparelli’s wreckage next week, ESA said. The sharper views from HiRISE, essentially a downward-facing telescope on the orbiter, might better identify debris and individual components from the spacecraft.

Schiaparelli traveled to Mars piggyback aboard the Trace Gas Orbiter, which steered into orbit around the red planet at the same time as the landing probe’s ill-fated descent. The two spacecraft separated Sunday to arrive at Mars on different trajectories.

The two spacecraft launched in March from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Russian Proton rocket, the first of two missions to Mars under the auspices of the joint European-Russian ExoMars program.

The Trace Gas Orbiter, or TGO, is operating normally after accomplishing a critical main engine burn Wednesday, circling Mars in an orbit with a high point of around 62,750 miles (101,000 kilometers) and a low point of 2,293 miles (3,691 kilometers). The orbiter completes one lap around Mars every 4.2 days, ESA said, very close to engineers’ predictions.

Ground controllers plan to switch on the TGO’s instruments next month for eight days of observations. Beginning in March, the orbiter will dip into the upper fringes of the Martian atmosphere on each orbit, using aerodynamic drag to pull the spacecraft into a tighter, circular orbit around 250 miles (400 kilometers) in altitude.

The “aerobraking” campaign will continue for most of 2017, and the TGO’s regular science observations should begin by the end of next year.

The orbiter carries sensors to detect gases like methane in the atmosphere, a possible signature of ongoing biological or geological activity on the red planet. Scientists hope to identify the source of trace levels of methane from the orbiter’s measurements.

The TGO also has a camera to help create maps of the Martian terrain, and a Russian instrument to find water resources hidden just below the surface. The orbiter will also serve as a relay station for Mars landers, including the European-built ExoMars rover scheduled for launch in July 2020 and NASA’s fleet of robots exploring the red planet.

Built by Thales Alenia Space and funded mainly by Italy, Schiaparelli was an experimental mission seeking to become the first European spacecraft to successfully land on Mars. The UK-led Beagle 2 lander touched down on Mars in 2003, but ran into trouble before it could contact Earth.

ESA plans to employ the same radar and computer design flown on Schiaparelli on a more ambitious joint European-Russian Mars lander to launch in 2020. That will be the second phase of the two-part ExoMars mission.

In a blog post on ESA’s website Friday, Jan Woerner, the agency’s director general, wrote that lessons learned from Schiaparelli’s failed landing could still turn the mission into a success by improving the reliability of the ExoMars rover’s descent system.

“From the data received we have already learned that contact stopped very late in the descent,” Woerner wrote. “This means we will obtain information from a close analysis of the data that Schiaparelli was built for, notably on the performance of elements such as the heat shield, parachute, radar, thrusters and so on. This information can subsequently be used to improve the design of the 2020 ExoMars mission, since in that mission the survival of the descent module will be of real scientific relevance.”


Artist’s concept of the European elements of the ExoMars program, including the Trace Gas Orbiter, Schiaparelli, and the rover set for launch in 2020. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
The ExoMars rover will ride through the atmosphere on a Russian-built descent stage aided by European elements in its guidance system — like the radar and computer — and drive off its landing pad to drill more than 6 feet (2 meters) underground, deeper than any previous mission. Scientists will search for signs of life hidden beneath the top level of Martian soil, where biomarkers from existing or extinct life could be shielded from the damaging effects of ionizing radiation present at the surface.

Woerner said the importance of the two elements of the 2016 mission could be weighed as 80 percent and 20 percent for the TGO and Schiaparelli, respectively. Engineers received at least 80 percent of Schiaparelli’s telemetry during its descent, therefore, the combined mission should be considered 96 percent successful, he wrote.

“So to sum up where we stand, we have achieved a successful orbit insertion of TGO, ready to perform science and act as a relay station for ExoMars 2020 ground science,” Woerner wrote. “Not only that, but we have received a large quantity of data from the lander giving us crucial information to help us perform a successful landing of the next mission.”

 

There are quite a few manufacturers of telescope eyepieces and quite a few levels of optical quality, but one of the top manufacturers is a firm called Televue who make different kinds/types of eyepieces with names like Naglers, Delos, Delite, Panoptics, Ethos, and Plossis, with the glass elements going from the simple construction of 2 lenses in an eyepiece to up to 6 or more in the more complex designs. One type is the Televue Radian which they stopped making in 1998 when the Rare Earth Element used in high grade optics became very expensive and so Televue ceased manufacture of the Radians, so Radians have become very rare and are seldom for sale new or used. But I've managed to buy a "rare" [as described by the Italian seller] 3mm Radian on e-bay for quite a low price. It arrived today in a large box filled with crumpled Italian newspapers and bubblewrap and when I managed to get time to open the box I found why the seller was describing it as "rare". The eyepiece box was still in the original sealed unbroken cellophane wrapping........now that is a rarity!! So I'm now in a bit of a quandary as I buy eyepieces to use, but because Televue no longer make the Radian range it put's the Radians into the hard to find and buy category. But to have one that is still in the original unbroken, sealed cellophane wrapping put it's in the Collector's territory. Another things a 3mm focal length eyepiece is a very powerful optic giving a high magnification and, believe it or not, Astronomers rarely use such high power eyepieces, mostly because the weather and "seeing" has to be really excellent to get the best out of them. I think I'll leave it in it's original wrapping for the time being, and then decide to open the box and wrapping on the rare occasion that the viewing is really, really, excellent!!

 

That thought crossed my mind too, Jack. But the seller is a well known, long established member of e-bay and a 5 star rated reputation so I'm fairly relaxed about the buy. There's quite a lot of really good professionally wrapped fraudulent items out there ready to take in the eager punter........but I'd never buy anything from a Hawker on the docks or the streets. We were both in the Services and we've had the experience of being offered the "genuine thing" at a dirt cheap "bargain" price.

 

I opened the box, Jack, and .................

 

Hi Sheal, it's Jupiter being Queen of the Skies and then Saturn will put in a proper appearance in the middle of the month. To the left and down of Jupiter you should see a bright star that is Spica. Then, again to your left, up high is another bright star which is Arcturus.

 

Hi Sheal, it doesn't get really dark here in Cheshire until around midnight now so I have to stay up until the early hours on a clear night to get to wander around the Stars. For the last few nights the skies have been cloudy so I've had no chance to use the Observatory properly, and the forecast for the coming week is more cloud, wind and rain.