As big as Jupiter...

23rd Oct 2014

The Sun was still far enough above the horizon on the afternoon of the 23rd that I could drag out the telescope, and the light-box that I had made for the Venus Transit, and check out this sun-spot I had been reading about on Bad Astronomy and Universe Today.

Despite dusk starting to colour the sky, and a bit of high-level haze, I still managed to get a few good photos of the projection of the Sun.

Amazing to think that this spot is the size of Jupiter, and that the smaller darker spot is the size of Earth.  Brain goes fizzle!

Blood moon

We had two total Lunar eclipses this year, one on 15 April and the other tonight 8 Oct.  This is the last total Lunar eclipse for a while, the next is 31 Jan 2018, and we luckily found a gap in patchy cloud cover to see the eclipse just as it finished totality at 10pm, and watch the shadow slip away for a while.
Got to use my new tripod for the first time and snapped a few photos, mostly using the 200mm zoom, 4 seconds at f5.7 (the minimum available at 200mm)

The gear aimed at the Lunar eclipse

Not a bad shot

When a plane came over, I managed to adjust the camera just in time to capture this...

As I was mucking around with the camera, L was enjoying the view through the telescope and then had a go at getting some shots on my mobile.

Totality just slipping away

more

and more...

As a happy bonus, while I was researching on Stellarium I noticed that Uranus would be near the Moon at the time of the eclipse.  Maybe...

It seemed to be in the right position, and even though the light pollution and cloud and atmospherics made it a bit blurry - I'm sure that the bluey green target on the left was a disk, and not a point source.  So I'm claiming that as my first sighting of Uranus through my own telescope (I once got to look at it through one of the telescope up on Mt Stromlo when having a tour once)

And then the clouds rolled back in, and we were done for the evening.

Gods of Time and War

With the Perth-ites in town, we had J and L over for a sleep-over with Kn on the 30th of Sept.  While they were over J was interested in Dobby, so we dragged it out to the front yard for a quick look at whatever was up.
Fortunately Saturn was up in the Western sky, so that was the obvious first target.  As always, a thrill to look at, and J and L were impressed.  The conditions allowed us to almost distinguish the Cassini Division in the rings, and a point at the 5 o'clock position in the eyepiece was most likely Titan.
With not much else to see, I notices that Mars was in Scorpio and close to Antares, so swung up and left to Mars.  Then explaining how the "Ancients" (Greeks) named the star Antares to be the rival of Ares (Mars) I swung over to the star for a quick comparison.
Finished off with a quick look at the definition of the craters on the terminator of the Waxing Cresent Moon.

That was about enough for a pair of young Perth residents on a cool Melbourne evening, so we headed back indoors.