question about starry nite online

[Gandaulfsmom]

does anyone know why when i input my zip or lat and long and time of day there is no view showing the night sky? this used to work for me before, i have not made any installations on my computer or done anything different security wise. just thought i would ask...thanks.... in particular i was at 41.6 lat and -88 long and was viewing the full moon at 1:30am this morning and saw a planet just below and to the right of the moon with what looked like a comet nearby can anyone tell me what i was viewing?

 

[MeteorWayne]

I don't know much about starry night, so can't help with that. The planet was Jupiter, quite bright right now. Don't really have any idea about a comet like object...there's nothing really in that area. Were you looking just with your eye, or with binoculars or a telescope? That might allow you to see some fainter things. Where was the cometary upject position and distance wise from Jupiter?

 

[Gandaulfsmom]

thank you for the quick response. i am very much a child at christmas as i just received my new Bushnell 100mm Northstar Mak-Cass telescope. i was viewing with the 25mm wide angle eyepiece. If you were to draw a straight line at 1:30am from the moon to Jupiter the comet like object was about 1/6th the distance to the northeast as you were viewing.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Well there is a small cluster of galaxies roughly that distance to the right and above Jupiter, but I would think they are too faint to be seen in that scope. It could have also been an internal refelction from Jupiter in the scope. Other than that, it's all guesswork

Welcome to Space.com, hope you hang around!

Wayne

 

[Gandaulfsmom]

Thank you for the warm welcome. For some reason the Starry Night online is now working and i was able to determine where in particular i saw the object i originally thought to be a comet. it was between 44 Capricorni and 45 Capricorni. If i were to give you a description of what i saw it had a bright spot near the tip travelling southward from 44 towards 45 but looked to be much more distant and there was a conical and somewhat curved fuzzy or cloudy area behind it starting small at the bright spot and fanning out towards the north end. i am just very curious, i will do my own research further but since i could locate it better i thought i would forward the info incase someone knows what it was.

I can tell i am going to like it here.

 

[RichardG]

I don't know about what you saw, but to answer the Starry Night question I can say this; I got my copy a couple of weeks ago. I put in my zip and customized the lat/long. It does know where I am and when the sun raises and sets. Seems that if when I look up something it knows if the sunshine fills the sky and shows me no stars. I found a menu switch under the "view" menu to turn off daylight, which shows me the sky as if it were night. Of course if it is dark out, the stars show up normally. This help if you use the program before dark, to plan what area of the sky and what objects you want to find.