I can't find the Moon

[Discocactus (Bill)]

Dear Crew

I just bought an 8X50 finder (thanks Ash) which happened to have a 4.5" Celestron firstscope and EQ2 (as I later discovered) mount attached. Well not quite attached. It took me a long time to find the moon but not as long as collimating the scope in the first place with a quite expensive - certainly more expensive than the scope - Orion sight tube from Bintel. First light was sunrise over the Jura Mountains on the shores of the Bay of Rainbows (as I later discovered). Truly stunning. Second was Clavius (made famous in the well known Bollywood flick- 201 minutes: A Spice Idiocy or was it that BBC miniseries: I, Clavius - as a Government employee I really appreciate the original Clavius who devised the Gregorian Calendar - he believed in a geocentric universe too). So I discovered that this scope with a 9 mm Plossl and 2X ($19) Barlow (ie 200X I believe), at least for the Moon, is truly brilliant. So this setup answers a few questions for me, ie what can you see in a small scope, how stable does a mount have to be and how heavy is it to lug around etc etc. But now to a question. This morning at 4 am Jupiter was just rising over the shed and looked really great at 100X but cloud bands were not obvious. Do I need a filter or was it just the seeing?

Cheers
Bill

[Jeff]

Hi Bill,

If the seeing is okay, you should be able to see the cloud bands (without colour) plus a few of the moons with your 4.5" scope. Some people recommend checking-out Jupiter's features with a Yellow filter to improve contrast (or maybe a neutral-density/moon filter), but I haven't found these to help much.

If the seeing is reasonable, 200x mag is generally pretty good for Jupiter and Saturn.

Having said that though, Jupiter's currently near the opposite side of the Sun and therefore not at its best for observing. The next favourable opposition (when Jupiter and the Sun are on opposite sides of Earth, and Jupiter is approaching its closest point to the Sun) will be in September 2010).

Cheers.

[Discocactus (Bill)]

Thanks Jeff
A friend of mine with an 8" SCT also claims to have trouble finding the cloud bands so maybe needs perseverance with a small scope...Polarized filters don't seem to help much.
Bill