Meade Instruments StarPro AZ Serie Mode D'emploi page 10

and are sometimes called gas giants.
If they had grown much bigger, they
8
may have become stars. Pluto is made
mostly of ice.
Jupiter is quite interesting to observe. You
can see bands across the face of Jupiter. The
more time you spend observing these bands,
the more details you will be able to see.
One of the most fascinating sights of Jupiter
are its moons. The four largest moons
are called the Galilean moons, after the
astronomer Galileo, who observed them for
the first time. If you've never watched the
Galilean moons in your telescope before,
Looking at or near the Sun will cause irreversible damage to your eye. Do not point this telescope at or near the Sun. Do not look through the telescope as it is moving.
you're missing a real treat! Each night, the
moons appear in different positions around
the Jovian sky. This is sometimes called
the Galilean dance. On any given night,
you might be able to see the shadow of a
moon on the face of Jupiter, see one moon
eclipse another or even see a moon emerge
from behind Jupiter's giant disk. Drawing
the positions of the moons each night is an
excellent exercise for novice astronomers.
Any small telescope can see the four Galilean
moons of Jupiter (Fig 6), plus a few others,
but how many moons does Jupiter actually
have? No one knows for sure! Nor are we
sure how many Saturn has either. At last
count, Jupiter had over 60 moons, and held a
small lead over Saturn. Most of these moons
are very small and can only be seen with very
large telescopes.
Probably the most memorable sight you will
see in your telescope is Saturn. Although you
may not see many features on the surface
of Saturn, its ring structure will steal your
breath away. You will probably be able to see
a black opening in the rings, known as the
Cassini band.
Saturn is not the only planet that has rings,
but it is the only set of rings that can be seen
with a small telescope. Jupiter's rings cannot
be seen from Earth at all—the Voyager
spacecraft discovered the ring after it passed
Jupiter and looked back at it. It turns out,
only with the sunlight shining through them,
can the rings be seen. Uranus and Neptune
also have faint rings.
Optional color filters help bring out detail and
contrast of the planets. Meade offers a line of
inexpensive color filters.
(c) nimax GmbH
Fig. 6