Uranus

Last night I visited our 7th planet from the sun: Uranus. On the evening of December 28th, 2008 at approx. 9:00pm CST under clear skies (temp 24 degrees with calm winds), I looked to the southwest and found the brightest star near the horizon which is Cetus. Then I worked my way west along the horizon into the constellation Aquarius. From the naked eye, Uranus is barely visible at about 5.7 magnitude. It would appear as a bluish star - really no different from the other stars near the western horizon. Once I found the general area star charts placed Uranus, I began probing the search area with a 25mm lense scanning back and forth. Uranus is discernible as a small greenish disc with a 25mm eyepiece, though it took several times to confirm by comparing it to neighboring stars. No matter how close a star may be to Earth (whether 2.5 light years or 2.5 million light years), a star will still appear only as a pin point of light. Thus, planets like Uranus and Neptune will actually appears as discs once ample magnification is achieved. I boosted the magnification to 5mm and could clearly make out a bluish green fuzzy disc. It was best viewed with a 10mm eyepiece and could be resolved as a planetary disc about three times the diameter of neighboring stars.

A treat indeed, as Uranus sits about 3 billion km from the Sun. Uranus revolves around the Sun once every 84 Earth years. Uranus's mass is roughly 14.5 times that of the Earth, making it the least massive of the giant planets. I was unable to make out any distinguishing characteristics like cloud patterns, ring systems or moons. Never the less, it was a rewarding find; especially being that it was only discovered in 1690 and was thought to be a star. In the future, I will attempt to photograph this planet.