Daytime Observing?

[Matty P (Matt)]

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

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by Matty P

How will I be able to align my GOTO scope?

Thanks

From what I've read, align at night then leave everything in place and switched on until daytime?

[turbo_pascale (Rob)]

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

I don't know about your scope, but some GOTO scopes have a "park" feature. You align at night, do all your playing around for the evening, then "park". This sets a "known" position for the entire gear-train when you turn if off. Cover it up, don't touch anything. Switch it on during the day, then tell it the time/date, and you should be as well aligned as the night before as long as you didn't move anything.

I don't know how far away from the sun you should be to be "safe" (as long as it's not down the barrel you'd be OK I assume), but more to the point, I think on a sunny day, you'd want the sun as far behind you as possible to avoid the glare.

Use some of the guides on here for solar observing practices to give you a better idea of what is safe or not.

Turbo

[Matty P (Matt)]

Originally Posted by erick

From what I've read, align at night then leave everything in place and switched on until daytime?

I don't like the idea of leaving my scope (powered on) outside overnight exposed to the elements. It would be nice to have an observatory.

My scope does have a hibernate function, but going back to what I said before. I really dislike the idea of leaving the scope outside with no protection.

Is there any other way of aligning the scope in daylight?

[sheeny (Al)]

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.

[Outbackmanyep]

Originally Posted by Matty P

I don't like the idea of leaving my scope (powered on) outside overnight exposed to the elements. It would be nice to have an observatory.

My scope does have a hibernate function, but going back to what I said before. I really dislike the idea of leaving the scope outside with no protection.

Is there any other way of aligning the scope in daylight?

When i was looking for P1 last year,i used my solar filter, aligned on the sun (but i am assuming you aligned the night before) and using the co-ordinates of the sun on the particular day in question, using software or whatever, set your RA setting circle to the marks on the base consistent with the sun's co-ordinates....Then i go by setting circles, low power eyepiece, remove solar filter and find the general area then scan......try to find something like Venus, then you can check alignment using drift...and everything else should be sweet!

I used the Sun & Venus to help me find P1, i found the sun, set my circles, then found Venus, checked my setting circle measurement against known literature (namely Astronomy 2007) and went from there, it worked fine!
Just have to be careful when looking in the vicinity of the sun!

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

I tried this very exercise last year in November at Ballarat. I took the tube off each night and put it onto the back seat of the car parked next to the tripod, then put a large garbage bag over the tripod each night. When you park the scope, you can then turn it off, even unplug the battery if you like. The offsets for alignment must be stored in non volatile memory. You will need to make sure the ground it is sitting on is quite firm otherwise it may settle a bit overnight throwing the alignment out. If you don't get a star in the field you won't have a clue how much to move to find it and so will be unsuccessful.

The next morning I just put the tube back on and powered up, put the 40mm in to give the the widest possible view for the most likely success. Select "last alignment" and then went to Alpha Centauri. When I looked in the eyepiece both of them were clearly visible! Because this was in the south, and the scope was pointing south in the home position, slewing past the Sun was not a problem. If you are slewing to any stars that are north or higher up, I would suggest putting the cap on the scope before slewing.

I was able to see every bright star that was above the horizon down to Regulus. This was all done around mid day on a day in the mid 30's...it don't get much brighter than that! I could also see Jupiter as well but didn't try the other planets as they were dangerously close to the Sun or hadn't risen.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Well on a permanent pier my Vixen Atlux does this rather well - you simply turn it off when you are finished and cover it. So long as you don't turn it off during a fast slew (who would do that?) - it is supposed to remember its exact set up.

With good polar alignment I have found it is pretty accurate on power on - say within a few arc minute of its (singular) alignment star. So I have say aligned on Achernar and at 3am switched things off. On a clear day a week later, home early I switch things on at 4pm (it gets dark around 8:30pm) and slew to Achernar or Canopus and its very close to dead centre. I generally sync on it again and there is my alignment process done.

For the next 3-4 hours I can periodically monitor the drift if any in this star to confirm the accuracy of my polar alignment.

And no I wouldn't advise trying it on anything within 50 degrees of the Sun.

[Nightshift]

OK, I do this all the time and it is really easy, no need to park scope.

I use a Meade ETX90 but I am sure it will be the same for your celestron.

get the OTA and tripod dead level, use spirit level if you have to. Point OTA true north using best comapss available, do not use magnetic north, must use true north.

Turn scope on, set date time etc, then autoalign to any two stars, just accept that the OTA is pointing at them when asked, then slew to a bright planet you know is up, clearly Venus and Jup are your best options here, if you choose Venus, leave your caps on until it finishes slewing and check to make sure that OTA is far enough away from sun, remove caps, look through finder only, if you got level and north spot on then the object should be in FOV of finder, always is for me, then manually slew scope to object and set align on hand piece. Voila, everythign else should be in FOV in eyepiece from there. I have very sucessfully found Mercury, venus, Jup and saturn using this method, (oh Moon too) but stars are a bit trickier, Sirius is the only one I have had luck with. It is best to perform this in the later afternoon when the air is steadiest, by then the upper and lower atmosphere's have come as close as they can be. This is a fantastic way to view Jupiter by the way, the GRS is quite observable in the afternoons as the seeing is usually very good, often better than night (before midnight) as the temperatures have settled.

Happy daytime hunting, Dennis.