"Uranus, Jupiter, Pleiades comparison"

Today we happily feature John Baars' excellent report on observing Uranus, Jupiter, and the Pleiades cluster all through 102mm refractors. First of all, he observed and rendered Uranus, which as noted, didn't seem very disk like even at 300x. Partly this was due to the quality of the skies being a bit under the weather.

Jupiter at 140x power was much more amenable to a sketch and he captured the bands and festoons of gaseous detail in the atmosphere of the planet quite successfully. Lastly was a comparison of the Pleiades both with and without a CCD blue filter. With the 102mm scope and filter, the subtle shine of the reflection nebula associated with Merope and Alycone was quite obvious. Since I have never seen nebulosity around these stars in any instrument this is quite impressive! Congratulations John on a nice evening out under the planets and stars and on winning the VROD for the day!

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