Hello Everyone, My name is Rishabh Sagar.
I wanted to share a quick report and some notes from a highly memorable observing session that recently got tracked and verified. We all know how punishing urban light pollution can be, but this session proved that with patience and the right optical matching, you can pull off some incredibly rare visual observations right from the heart of a major city.
Logging this session from the severe Bortle 9 skies of New Delhi, India, the primary goal was to maximize a clear window to resolve planetary detail under intense urban smog and heavy light pollution.
The Target & Visual Impression
While Saturn was the main highlight of the session—showing beautiful, crisp ring structures despite the thick city soup—the real triumph was using the gas giant as a stepping stone to hunt down Neptune within the exact same observing window.
At a tiny 2.3 arcseconds, Neptune is tough for any backyard astronomer, but resolving its distinct, pale blue planetary disk right next to the 10.8-magnitude reference star TYC 4663-378 from a light-polluted megacity felt next to impossible. Against all odds, the disk structure and color separation were clearly achieved.
The Setup & Gear
To keep things highly accessible and prove you don’t need a massive observatory to beat light pollution, the entire session was done using modest, manual gear:
- Scope: 130mm (5-inch) Newtonian Reflector (completely manual, no GoTo or motorized tracking)
- Eyepiece: Svbony 7–21mm Zoom Eyepiece (excellent for dialing in the exact focal length needed to balance contrast against the glowing sky background)
- Conditions: Bortle 9, high atmospheric haze, but decent local transparency.
Verification & Citizen Science Impact
What started as a personal challenge turned into something much bigger. Because resolving these targets under such extreme urban constraints is highly technically demanding, the observation report was submitted for formal review.
I’m incredibly proud to share that the data has been peer-verified by research teams at both the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) in the US and the British Astronomical Association (BAA) in the UK and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. It has now been officially archived in the ALPO Remote Planets Report. Following the verification, it even opened up doors to collaborate on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project.
It goes to show: don’t let city lights keep your scopes packed away in the closet. The planets are bright enough to punch through the smog if your collimation is tight and your patience is high!
Clear skies,
Rishabh Sagar
NASA Citizen Scientist