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Category: Events

On the evening of Jan 17 (and 18), the sky from San Diego will have no moon, but lots of planets.

Dress Warm - sitting still in the cold night at a telescope is very chilling.  Bring the warmest clothes you can.

White flashlights and other lights will ruin your night vision.  Red lights, red flashlights, red headlamps allow you to see without ruining your night vision.  In about twenty minutes in darkness your eyes become very sensitive to faint light: Night Vision!  Bright lights reset that timer.

Merit Badge info: Scouting Astronomy Merit Badge

Observing Plan

(Note: I originally had the wrong dates (Friday and Saturday). The actual dates are Saturday and Sunday (Jan 17 and 18 - I'll replace the Saturday information with Monday shortly).

here's a Target Checklist:  260117-Target Checks

There will be lots of scopes.  You'll likely get to point one.  Jupiter is the brightest "star" in the sky.  It's great practice pointing a scope (it's a learned skill (because a telescope's field of view).

Go out tonight and look to the East.  That big bright "star" is Jupiter.  If you have binoculars, take a look.  What do you see?

Orion's Nebula is a great "Deep Sky Object" - AND it's visible from city skies.  It's a featured attraction in the winter. You'll want to know where to find it.  On the How To Starhop page, instructions are there for the Orion Nebula.  See if you can find the spot the location from home (try after 8:00pm). 

At Agua Caliente campground, the mountains block the west and southwest, so Saturn should be a first target.  The rings are edge-on, so this will be the least amazing Saturn ever looks.  You'll see a ball with a line extending through it.  Still worth a look.

Andromeda - The nearest big galaxy and the farthest object you can see with your naked eye (4 million light years).  It will set behind the mountains early, so get to it.

Neptune.  Forget about it.  It is indistinguishable from the stars in any of the telescopes we're bringing (even the 16-inch).

Uranus.  This will show as a green ball, not much bigger than the background stars, except that it definitely looks like a ball, not a point.  See and be able to brag to your friends.

Jupiter.  Jupiter is pretty much always amazing and it's in the sky from dusk until almost dawn.  And we're close to it.  A great night for Jupiter.

Here's what it will look like on Friday night (timestamp on the top of the video).  You can see this from very bright skies.

Jupiter rotates once every 9 hours - crazy fast.  On Friday January 16, as it's getting dark the Great Red Spot has just "risen" (rotated into view). Over the next couple of hours, you'll see it move west across the face of Jupiter.  If you watch until dawn, you'll see it rise again.

Note: it is not very red - it's kind of salmon-colored - and it doesn't stand out very clearly from the storm band it's embedded in.    I didn't see it for years until the Southern Equatorial Belt disappeared for a few months (it does that occasionally).  The Spot definitely stands out against the white cloud background.

Here's what Jupiter will look like on Saturday Night:

Did you see the cool things that happen?  But very early in the morning.

The secret spectacle that hopefully none of the campers are awake for:  Io Shadow Transit and Callisto hide

Jupiter Sunday night:

Great Red Spot rolls into view at around 6:30 and 4:20a. A few minutes after midnight, Io ducks behind Jupiter and reappears at around 2:25 am.

The Orion Nebula is in prime position once it's dark.

 Note: everything mentioned above is visible from cities.  As in tonight (well, the planets move around and the moon transits occur at different times - but the objects are bright enough to be see with inexpensive telescopes or binoculars).

 Looking west/northwest (again, at Agua Caliente, low west is blocked):

You get some Milky Way. Sweep a scope through here.

After 7:30p or so, you should be able to use two of the stars in the Big Dipper "bowl" to find two really cool galaxies, M81 and M82 (Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy (or Exploding Galaxy).  Draw a line between the two stars and go that distance again.  With low power you should be able to find them.  One is face-on and the other is edge-on

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Category: Events

• Saturn
• Transit
• Titan

Note: Jupiter has shadow transits all the time (the planet's equatorial plane (where most of the moons orbit) never gets so inclined that the shadowing moons' shadows miss the planet (much).

See a Shadow Crawl across Saturn's Face

Saturn only gets shadow transits when it's equatorial (and ring plane) is aligned with the ecliptic - around its equinoxes occuring equidistant (equi-temporal, really) in its 29-year orbit.  Only Titan is large enough to cast a shadow large enough for modest amateur telescopes (it's the second largest moon in the solar systems and the second moon to get a lander on it).

So one advantage of Saturn looking it's dullest (it's rings are nearly edge-on) is that we can see Titan's shadow.  Note: Titan is almost always visibile in a telescope - even small ones.

You'll need a telescope, but not necessarily a good one.  But go out early to see if you can see Saturn clearly (well before the transit occurs).  Saturn rises around sunset, so as soon as it clears the murk of the low horizon in the southeast, take a look.  You do NOT need to find a dark sky: the planets' brightness shines through urban light pollution pretty well.

When

Friday September 19, 2025 - (past - Google "Titan Shadow Transit" to find the next transits)

Friday Night around 11:30p PDT (UTC - 7) (Saturday Morning 2:30a EDT) Titan's shadow is about halfway across the face of Saturn.  As shown below. 

The shadow ingresses the limb of Saturn at around 10:00p and egresses at around 12:30a.  If you observe any time in between, you should be able to see Titan's shadow.

The rings are nearly edge on, so the jaw-drop Saturn effect is at a minimum.

Small scopes of decent quality will show the shadow, but only higher optics would allow seeing Titan against Saturn's face.

Screenshot from Sky Safari near mid-transit:

Finding Saturn

Saturn is in a pretty dull part of the southern sky.  There are few bright stars.  At 11:00p or so Saturn is a little west of south about halfway up the sky.  It's bright (but not as bright as it can be when the rings are at fuller tilt, reflecting more sunlight).  Further south of it is the brightest star in the region, Fomalhaut.

 Note: spend $2.99 and get Sky-Safari on your phone.  Search for "Saturn" and select Locate.  SkySafari will point your phone at Saturn.

Note, that if you see "Center" as opposed to "Locate" that means the Compass setting needs to be turned on. 

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Category: Events

• Eclipse

Solar Eclipse:  Saturday, October 14, 2023

Early morning West Coast, midday East Coast:

• • San Diego: begins 8:09am PDT, maxes 9:26am, ends 10:52am
  • Orlando:  begins 11:52am EDT, maxes 1:26pm, ends 3:02pm
• check your city at: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/annular-solar-eclipse.html

Unless you live along a path between Eugene, Oregon and Austin, TX, the October 14, 2023 eclipse will be a fairly common, decent partial eclipse.

• A great website about the Eclipse

It is still definitely worth a look, especially the closer you are to that path.  San Diego gets the worst coverage west of the diagonal path - about 67% coverage - Florida gets 55%.  The diagonal passing through Chicago gets 40%, New York 20%

Note: Never look at the sun without proper eye protection. If you're using unprotected binoculars or telescopes you will experience INSTANT permanent eye damage.

Eye protection information is here:  Looking at the Sun - Precautions

• Note that amazon will deliver Eclipse Glasses very quickly (overnight in many cases) for a couple dollars / pair.  

There's nothing like a Total Solar Eclipse, but a Partial is still worth seeing.  What's the visceral/emotional difference?  The Eclipse Experience - Partial vs Total

Here's the max in San Diego:

Note that eclipses are rare, but observing the sun - safely - can be an everyday activity.  The sun actually has visible "weather" that changes from day to day.  Solar!

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Category: Events

• Planets
• Planets Visible
• Planets When

What nights are the visible planets actually visible?

They're visible almost every day of the year.

While you'll often hear that one planet or another is visible for some limited period of time, it's generally just an "extra good" time to view them. 

You'll often hear that a particular constellation or celestial object is a "Spring Constellation" or "Summer Target". 

That seasonal designation just means that it's visible in the summer sky after sunset - the time when most casual observers are likely under the sky.  

We should all understand that if the sun were not in the sky, we'd see 360 degrees of stars and planets.  It's up there all the time.  

The sun washes out the whole sky half the day, right?  So we should only see have the sky on any give 24-hour day, right?

Actually, consider what happens when the sun goes down and it gets (mostly dark):

If you look up, you see half the sky.  Now stand there for the next eight hours, what are you going to see?  You are going to see a whole bunch of new sky rise.  1/2 sky plus 1/3 sky (8 hrs / 24 hrs = 1/3 rotation) = 5/6 of the sky.  Depending on your lattitude and the season, you'll have a little more or less time before sunset: you can see most of the sky on any given night.   

So to see any particular object, you just need to know what time it's in the sky and decide whether you're up for it.