Little Pluto...Big Moon

[PSALM19.1 (Shaun)]

Of course we are all aware of the conjunction of Pluto and The Moon tonight aren't we....? And I suppose that the moon would block out any light coming from the tiny..ah....planet? Yes, I have heard it is possible to see a faint speck of light from Pluto in an 8" scope......all the best to me considering it took me weeks to find Uranus and Neptune.....

...oh, and the sky in the Illawarra is full of clouds and no doubt dust and stuff from the high, dry, windy and hot weather yesterday....

...nope, no challenge at all

[AG Hybrid (Adrian)]

Pluto is magnitude 14.1. The moon is 41%. They are next to each other. Its not a challenge. Its punishment.

Also, have you ever seen Triton the bright moon of Neptune? That's magnitude 13.8.

Triton is 2700 KM in diameter at a distance of 4.47 billion KM away.

Pluto has a diameter of 2300 KM at a distance of 4.7 billion KM away.

I'm pretty certain to spot Pluto with certainty you would need to take astrophoto's of the field on consecutive nights and then you need to play spot the difference.

When I was in the Blue Mountains last week with my 12" I looked at the exact location Pluto was meant to be according to SkySafari. I was like "Yep!! There it is!! That white dot there". Along with the 100+ other white dots in the field of view. Almost impossible to determine the difference.

By all means give it a go. But, try spotting Triton first. You'll want about 300x - 360x magnification. In my 12" I required using averted vision.

Your 8" scope has a theoretical limiting stellar magnitude of 14.2. So Triton should potentially be in reach. Pluto is theoretically in reach but sensibly impossible without astrophotography - especially with the moon that close and that bright.

On the upside. Neptune is high in the sky at about 10 PM. So you wont have to look through too much atmosphere to see it. I found Triton in the center of Sydney in 1.5 mag skies. Shellharbour should be much more forgiving.

If you go for Triton let us know how you go. I guarantee you will flip the **** out when you see it for the first time with your own scope and your own eyes.

[PSALM19.1 (Shaun)]

Thanks! Yes, I think I'll leave the punnishment of spotting Pluto! More research led me to the conclusion that it's basically impossible to find it when the moon is shining!

Have heard folks spotting Triton and would love to give that a go. I guess it will be the little white dot near the bigger blue blob in my 8"! Grrrr, and it's a bit windy at the moment too.....

[PSALM19.1 (Shaun)]

Well, the sky was perfectly clear and so Titan seemed possible...firstly, the moon was very close last night and really impressive; possibly better than any other time I've looked at it! My daughter snapped a great photo of it through the eyepiece in her Iphone! A mate and I searched the skies for Neptune (which took a long long time!) Seeing was not good and it was real fuzzy! I think we saw Triton, but it was so faint that it was hard to tell for sure. I have certainly seen Neptune better than that....oh well...we then kept going, looking at deep sky objects: the Orion Nebula was breath-taking!

Does anyone know how well Andromeda looks in an 8"? Lastly, I downloaded Astro Panel onto my android tablet which gives detail about seeing conditions etc...is a really handy tool!

My daughter's Iphone moon pic: