Photographing Uranus

The planet Uranus as seen through my 127mm refractor
at 7.30pm on Dec 04 2013.

Possibly, the little blue dot below Uranus at approx 7.o'clock is one of its moons, Oberon, but it might be a background star?

Not a brilliant image as the battery powering my mount failed, the wind was getting up and I was becoming icy cold.  It is also composed from a single frame taken with my DSLR, rather than a frame stack from a video clip taken with my planetary camera.

Uranus is a very cold gas giant planet.  At methane cloud top, the planet is minus 200 degrees C, good heavens, that's even colder than the wind that blows just outside the General Post Office in Great Yarmouth!.  Although it looks like a small blue dot in this photograph, the planet is 14.5 times more massive than the Earth.  Being a gas giant, Uranus has a relatively low mean density and so in volume terms it is 63,000 times bigger than Earth.  It is, however, a very long way away, approximately 3 billion kilometres distant (3,000,000,000).  So photographing Uranus is not as easy as you might think.

It is possible to see Uranus using 10x50mm. binoculars but you need a good dark night and to know where to look.

For more information follow the link:
http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/uranus.htm