The solar system: our home

The imaging of the solar system main bodies is often taken with a simple webcam inserted into our telescope. The results are really wonderful. Clik here to go now to the galleries.

The solar system is our home among a huge space called Universe, populated by giant islands of stars, called galaxies, and by an enormous, nearly empty, extremely cold space, which size is impossible to imagine for every man.

The solar system, despite the size much greater than any experience, is just a little dot into our Galaxy, but it could be a very interesting place.
Frequently, the amateur astronomes leave out the observation of our neighbourhood, taking a look to the farther objects like galaxies, nebulas and star clusters.
Of the other hand, the novices think that the imaging of the planets is restricted to the professional community equiequipped with larger and powerful telescopes. This is completely FALSE.
Our solar system, the planets, moons, comets and asteroids are wonderful bodies, easy to study with any telescope. You just need a small, good quality telescope, which will show you unbelievable featues, very similar to the results taken with the biggest telescopes.
Often the results will be useful to the professional astronomy community.
 

Features and details to capture are a lot.
Venus has a complitcated clouds system wich rotates in few days and change its aspect from one day to another.
Mars has a thiny atmosphere with a dynamic similar to our Earth's: clouds, haze, and huge dust storms can change its aspect in few hours.
Jupiter has an atmosphere so rich in features that it is nearly impossible to identify all the details. The 4 galileian moons adds more to this celestial show. The angular size of the main moons are about 1,5" (arcseconds); this means that your 20-25 centimeters telescope is able to detect their disks and some large details, especially on Ganimede, the largest moon of the solar system.
We want to talk about Saturn? The ringed planet is the best show you will ever see through a telescope. Its atmosphere is similar, but quiter, than Jupiter's and the ring system is awesome. During the years the inclination of the planet, included the rings system, changes and show you always a different portrait. A 25 centimeters telescope and a normal webcam (or a planetary camera) will allow you to idenfity clarly at least 5 rings, but you could see much more.

Talking of the Planets, we have not spoken about the Moon and the Sun, respectively our natural satellite and the star wich brings all solar system together. The moon is a real luna park for everyone. Its proximity to our planet give us the unique chance to study it depest. Your 25 centimeters scope will show you features smaller than 500 meters. Craters, mountains, highlands, valleys, slopes and much more is waiting for you.

Our star, if observed and imaged with a good solar filter, shows an aspect totally hidden by its huge brightness. Its gassous surface teems with a giant sacs of gas, called granulation; they are just large bubbles of gas, with a typical size of some hundreds of kilometers which go up from the depths and then, once reached the surface (photosphere) get cool and go down again in few minutes.
The whole photosphere seem to be a vaste boiling pot.
Sunspots are the most famous details of the Sun; theis size is often many times the size of the Earth and change rapidly in few days.
If you have the chance to observe and image with some particular solar telescopes (equipped with H-alpha or Calcium filters), you will discover much many featuers, like prominences, huge columns of hot gas ejected from the surface, and much more, like the cromosphere, the spiculae, the cromospheric network.

There is enough fun and science for everyone!

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