A couple of posts back, I mentioned that my grand-kids were over for a visit on Saturday, during which we built the three models in the Estes '3 Bandits' kit.
Later that evening, I happened to look outside and see a bright, nearly first quarter moon hanging in the sky.
I pulled out my old 60mm refractor telescope from the closet, and set it up on the back deck so that the kids could view the moon. Lots of Ooohs, Aaaahs, and "Cool !"s as we took turns observing all of the craters, mountains and plains highlighted along the moon's limb using a 25mm eyepiece.
While we were out, I noticed that Venus was hanging well above the western horizon, so I trained the telescope on that object. To my surprise, the seeing (degree of atmospheric turbulence) was very good, and we could distinctively see Venus' 'half disc' phase.
A further scan of the sky along the ecliptic revealed yet another of the bright planets.
"I'm betting that's Jupiter" I told the kids. The view in the telescope optics confirmed it. More exclamations from the young 'uns as we were able to make out the north and south equatorial bands and two of the Galilean moons using a higher power eyepiece.
"Grampa, what is that one?" one of the kids exclaimed, pointing further eastward.
I looked, and to my surprise, there was a bright reddish steady object.
Mars.
The telescopic view didn't show too much remarkable there. A small reddish disc.
It was then that I noticed, about halfway between the moon and Mars, another fainter steady object.
"No way!", I said, "That's got to be Saturn!"
Sure enough, the ringed planet was easily visible and a pleasant sight at around 100x. The planet currently is at a point in its orbit where the rings are near full inclination to our view. More gleeful reactions from the kids.
I was pretty thrilled at all of this myself, mainly because I had never before observed the moon and the four brighter planets so closely aligned along the ecliptic, and observable on the same evening.
It was truly a great day with the grand kids for model rocketry and solar system visual astronomy!
