Telescope Reviews: Juno

Tonight and Thursday night I saw my first asteriod!

I had read that it would be around mag 8 or so, and I found it with my Q/24mm Brandon crossing from Pisces into Aquarius.

The Pocket Sky Atlas was good enough to get me in the general area, but I needed a deeper atlas to determine which dots were stars and which was Juno. So chart Z/110 of the (free - thanks Jose R Torres Lapasio) TriAlas/Deep Sky Atlas was just the tool.

On Thursday I was confident I had found Juno, but tonight I confirmed it, seeing the bright dot in a different place in the star field (still star-like at 180x, though). Woo-Hoo! And I also got a chance to see the shadow transit of Io across Jupiter while waiting for Juno to get past my neighborhood "stuff" blocking the clear sky. Maximum (clean) magnification tonight was about 135x for my Q, but it was sure nice spending some time under the stars after bunches of not-so-nice weather. In fact, just after I found it on Thursday night, the sky clouded over.

Have any other Q's been used for seeing Juno?

Edited by JimK (09/27/09 07:06 PM)