Meade LX70 R5 5 inch Instruction Manual - Page 23

coloring on the planet's surface may be visible. start with an easy grouping of stars, such as the Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system Big Dipper in Ursa Major. Then, use a star chart and is eleven times the diameter of Earth. The to explore across the sky. planet appears as a disk with dark lines stretch- ing across the surface. These lines are cloud Galaxies are large assemblies of stars, nebu- bands in the atmosphere. Four of Jupiter's lae, and star clusters that are bound by gravity. moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto) can The most common shape is spiral (such as our be seen as "star-like" points of light when using own Milky Way), but galaxies can also be ellip- even the lowest magnification. These moons tical, or even irregular blobs. The Andromeda orbit Jupiter so that the number of moons vis- Galaxy (M31) is the closest spiral-type galaxy to ible on any given night changes as they circle our own. This galaxy appears fuzzy and cigar- around the giant planet. shaped. It is 2.2 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda, located between the Saturn is nine times the diameter of Earth and large "W" of Cassiopeia and the great square of appears as a small, round disk with rings ex- Pegasus. tending out from either side. In 1610, Galileo, the first person to observe Saturn through a telescope, did not understand that what he was seeing were rings. Instead, he believed that Saturn had "ears." Saturn's rings are composed of billions of ice particles ranging in size from a speck of dust to the size of a house. The ma- jor division in Saturn's rings, called the Cassini Division, is occasionally visible through medium sized telescopes. Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons can also be seen as a bright, star-like object near the planet. Deep-Sky Objects: Star charts can be used to locate constellations, individual stars and deep- sky objects. Examples of various deep-sky ob- jects are given below: Figure 45: Saturn Stars are large gaseous objects that are self-illuminated by nuclear fusion in their core. Because of their vast distances from our solar system, all stars appear as pinpoints of light, irrespective of the size of the telescope used. Nebulae are vast interstellar clouds of gas and dust where stars are formed. Most impressive of these is the Great Nebula in Orion (M42), a diffuse nebula that appears as a faint wispy gray cloud. M42 is 1600 light years from Earth. Open Clusters are loose groupings of young stars, all recently formed from the same diffuse nebula. The Pleiades is an open cluster 410 light years away. Through the LX70 telescope numerous stars are visible. Figure 46: Craters on the Moon Figure 47: Jupiter Constellations are large, imaginary patterns of stars believed by ancient civilizations to be the celestial equivalent of objects, animals, people, or gods. These patterns are too large to be seen through a telescope. To learn the constellations, 23