The furthest planets in our Solar System

So over the past 9 months of owning my telescope I have looked at and imaged three planets, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn. A few nights ago I decided that I would see if I could capture the 7th and 8th planets in our Solar System, Uranus and Neptune.

I started with Uranus and was annoyed to find that it was rather close to some  very annoying street lights. It was so bad that my finderscope just showed orange glow when I did get the main telescope pointed at Uranus. It is times like this that I really appreciate having GOTO capability as my alignment was good enough to get the planet into my 25mm Eyepiece FoV straight away. I was pretty chuffed to see that I could make a slightly green/blue tinged disc hovering there. Unfortunately, when I moved to the webcam I failed utterly to get an image appearing, I even used my reticle eyepiece to make sure it was centered but still nothing. To be honest, I suspect the low aperture of my telescope means that there is not enough light getting through. I did do a quick check on Astrobin and most people who have posted images are using 8 inch telescopes. Perhaps from a really dark site I would have more luck, but I think I will skip trying it again until I get better webcam.

After this minor disappointment I decided to look for Nepture in the hope that I could catch sight of this, the most distant planet in our system. There were no street lights this time although the Moon was close by which did wash out the view a little bit. However, I did managed to spot it as a tiny pin head of blue tinged light. I did try and up the magnification with my 2.5x barlow but the dimming effect all but made it impossible to spot Neptune beyond the odd fleeting glance. I don't see anyway that my telescope could pick up this planet to be honest so I guess imaging it will need to wait until I get something bigger.

In the end it was still nice seeing both these planets and actually getting some form of colour. I am sure I will take another look in the future from a darker site which will hopefully enable me to get some more magnification.