You can see jupiter and Saturn

[spookyjupy]

Has anyone seen?
it's raining so cloudy here and I hqvent been able to see them at all.
Just got a text a few hours ago that my sister saw them.
didn't know about Saturn but jupiter won't be this close to us again in our lifetime

(I think 70 years but Google yourself to check)

-As Professor Quirrel-
Thought you ought to know

Cloudy here too. It's disappointing 🌕🌙🌒🌓🌔

wonder if we will have many chances left

Thanks for the tip, I don’t think I’ve ever looked for a planet in the night sky before but I found something called Stellarium online that shows me where they should be. I think I can see mars but I thinks I’d have to go outside for Jupiter, and it doesn’t look like Saturn should be in clear view just yet. Daft as it sounds, are they just brighter stars?

Yep, I can see Jupiter from my bed! Shiny bright in the sky and giving me some perspective on life!

no idea I'm just hoping someone sees them as I can't. gutted really.
it's great you can what direction? South? West? give me a clue.

and I don't know
I thought I saw jupiter but on closer inspection it was just a crane close to the city centre.

Cloudy here too unfortunately. You can see both Jupiter and Saturn normally on a clear night. They'll look like bright stars, however at the moment Jupiter is particularly close so with a telescope or good binoculars you should be able to make out the rings. If the sky is clear Jupiter should be the brightest thing in the sky apart from the moon. This website theskylive.com/guide?geoid=2643743 tells you things visible in the sky each night and there are also a couple of night sky map apps that you can point at the sky and they will tell you what you are looking at and point out constellations. Cities aren't great for seeing the night sky though sadly

@Alvinne I will probably be an old maid before I can escape the city.

thanks for the link!
and it's clearing up here but still no luck

This is great thank you. I’m going to get DH binoculars out of the car tomorrow night and have a look for Jupiter. It’s a clear night here (in the Sourh) so hoping it is again tomorrow.

I used this:
stellarium-web.org

I can see Jupiter out of my en suite window and at the moment, being 36 weeks pregnant, I spend a lot of time in there in the middle of the night. It helps to concentrate the mind and makes me feel v small, which is never a bad thing. Jupiter is an incredible planet. We live rurally so can often see the other four brightest planets Saturn, Mars, Venus and Mercury. The free stargazing apps available are fantastic. We often see shooting stars and satellites whizzing across the universe. On a clear night we can clearly see the Milky Way. I’m going to buy DH a telescope for Christmas. A gift for him that’s really for me 🪐

You must have an incredibly good telescope to see Jupiter’s rings! I thought we only know about them since they were observed by Voyager 1. Please tell me what telescope you’re using as I want to buy one for DH. Thank you

It's very bright at the moment because it is close. But it will stay bright for quite a some time, so don't worry about seeing it when it is closest.

It is roughly in the East, East-South-East direction at around 20:00-2100 for my house (UK). A very bright, slightly yellowish star.

I have a 90 mm telescope. You can't really see that much with it. The 4 moons are clearly visible, and you can just about make out some banding on the disk. The problem is that the planet is very bright and all the colours wash out, there is no contrast. You need to get the correct filter. My guess is that you could see the 4x moons easily with binoculars.

For saturn with a 90 mm telescope you can see the rings. It is hard to make out much more, and Saturn is pretty featureless as a planet anyway. The other thing you might be able to see is the cassini division (largest gap in the rings) but I can't remember whether or not you can see this with a 90 mm scope.

Telescopes are a bit of a waste of time unless you get something pretty big. And once you get something big it becomes a mission to set it all up. I would say 8" is the minimum worth having. You can check on the web for example pictures.

There is a new type of scope coming out that uses digital imaging. These are quite expensive (say 1K or so) and are generally called smart telescopes. They are great for looking at nebula/galaxies, but not very good for planets.

I would advise anyone considering getting into astronomy to search the web first and get some examples of images. Bear in mind that the images may well be "stacked" - multiple images added together over time - to produce better images than you would see with your eyes through a scope.

For me telescopes are a difficult one, because lots of kids want one, but probably abandon them quite quickly because generally you can't see much with them. But if you think about it, it's probably not surprising that a 90 mm telescope for £250 can't match a $15 billion dollar NASA observatory for observations. So if your expectation is set on what you see on the web and on TV, you are likely to be disappointed.