On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Kevin Fetter <kfetter@yahoo.com> wrote: > Because they are there, and easy to see compared to other stuff in the night sky like supernova, comet's and asteroid's. Look at how many of them, you can see with just the eye's. Back in the late 1980s the arrival of Halley's comet inspired me to purchase a large 11x80 binocular. Using it and star maps in Sky & Telescope, I was able to pick out a number of rather faint comets, some nice galaxies (M31 and M33, e.g.), globular clusters, and open clusters, a very new moon invisible to me without the binocular, the crescent Venus in broad daylight six degrees away from the sun on the day of inferior conjunction, Galilean satellites, the asteroids Ceres and Vesta, and the planets Uranus and Neptune (so I've seen all eight solar system planets with my own eyes). These are, of course, all trivial objects for experienced observers. Was never able to pick out Titan near Saturn. Never had the $$$ to pick up a nice scope, and now that age + diabetes have blurred my vision, I guess I won't bother. I used to be able to scan the western sky with the binocular just after sunset on any clear day and pick up several satellites, though I had no idea which ones they might have been. I presume this is still possible, but I haven't been inclined to try in recent years. _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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