Quote:
Originally Posted by Matty P
Is it possible to observe planets and bright stars during daylight?
How far should the planet be from the sun to be safe to view?
How will I be able to align my GOTO scope? 
Thanks |
As Eric suggested, if you can align your scope at night and leave it that way is probably the best way to align.
I'm not familiar with your scope. Can you align on a planet? If so, you would need to find the planet first by naked eye - Venus and Jupiter can be found this way if you know where to look. Having found it in the sky, if you can align on either Venus or Jupiter (or both) you'll be in business.
Be very very careful doing this, Matt. You don't want the light from the sun making its way into the optics of your scope unfiltered. It can do a lot of damage to eyepieces, finderscopes, cross hairs, etc not to mention your eyes if you happen to be looking through the scope. Having seen the damage to Mike (Sausageman's) finder scope at IISAC, it takes no time at all the do serious damage!
All my daytime observing has been naked eye, except when I was looking for Comet McNaught when I made sure my binoculars were shielded by the eaves of my house (something that can't move!), the sun was moving away from the edge of the eaves so there was no chance I was going to fry my eyes.
If you are going to use your scope in the daytime, work out what angle from the centreline of the OTA you can look into the front of the scope and just see the primary mirror, then add a good margin of error to that. You don't want any light being focussed inside the OTA to do damage while you're observing. If you plan on using your finderscope, do the same thing to work out what angle light can come in from the side and get into the objective lens, and add a good 15 degrees for safety. These guidelines I present for the safety of your equipment only! I would suggest rather more generous margins for error when it comes to your eyesight! I would also advise against observing in front of the sun, so that if your scope drive fails you don't have the sun appear unexpectedly in the FOV!
I would also suggest you make sure the objectives of both the scope and finderscope are securely capped anytime you move the scope with a goto function - a quick slew across the sun would be enough to do damage.
You need to be really, really,
really careful about using your scope in the daytime!
Al.