Fading into history

Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon, and now there are only 6 of them left alive after Gene Cernan died yesterday, aged 82.

Cernan stepped off the Moon on December 19, 1972. I was only 6 months old.

The next manned NASA mission to the moon might be, *might be*, 2030.

Oh! *That* faint dot of light!

Bingo! Spotted Neptune last night!
With the help of the laptop and Stellarium next to the telescope, and the assurance that it had to be one of these spots close to Venus - I finally identified the right stars around Venus to be able to star-hop to the right small bluish dot.
Even better, I was able to capture the moment using my new phone holder thingy. The thingy still needs some work to improve the view port, the centering of the camera, the securing of the phone and the stability of the unit over the eyepiece barrel. However, it did make lining it up and holding it still easier, so that is a good start.
The pictures are not well exposed, and the stars are streaking a bit, but given the dodgy seeing conditions near the horizon and the amateur equipment I'm pretty happy with the fact that I still managed to capture the spirit of the moment - having Venus and Neptune visible in the same eyepiece. They were close too, as these images were taken through my 17mm ep.

So that's a big TICK for another planet spotted.

Actually, that's all of them. Wow!

(although I'm still not 100% about Uranus through my own telescope, but I have seen it through an old refractor up at Mt Stromlo observatory about 30 years ago)

The search continues...

So last night had another look for Neptune. Although there wasn't the smoke haze this time, it was a full moon - so still hard to see anything faint. So I'm still not sure I have seen Neptune, although I might've as I had a real good look around the part of the sky where it should be. But if it was one of the faint specs I looked at, I couldn't distinguish it at all.
So tonight I'll see if I can spot the spec near Venus. Amazingly it is the third clear evening in a row, although there is a distinct haze low on the horizon.
I also couldn't see comet Honda45 either, but I wasn't expecting too much there.

Mobile phone eyepiece mount - Mk1

So last night I finally started making a thingy to hold my mobile steady and level against the eyepiece of Dobby to make taking photos easier.





So far this prototype needs something to make it fit tighter over the EP barrel, and probably some screws to finger tighten it as well.

The search for Neptune

Last night I started the search for planet 8.

On Jan 12 Neptune and Venus are going to be in very close proximity, hopefully visible in the same eyepiece.
So last night I decided to take advantage of a nice evening to drag Dobby out to the back yard and check out Venus, Mars and then see if I could pick out Neptune in the sky between.
Unfortunately, the transparency was not great. It is low on the horizon, so there is a lot of bad air, plus there was a big grass fire during the day which didn't help either. Therefore, I'm unable to report with any certainty that I spotted it. I did see a number of objects, including a faint one that may have had a faint bluish hue. I'll try again tonight to spot Neptune before the big moment on Thursday.
I also took a couple of pictures of Venus and Mars. The Venus one is using the yellow filter on the EP, but has still flared out a bit. You can still see the half lit phase of the planet. The photo of Mars is a fairly accurate representation of the size and lack of detail visible.

Venus and Luna

Noticed that tonight there was a beautiful scene with Venus and the Moon in the low Western sky.  So I rushed out the back with the camera and tripod.

A New Year!

So that's it for 2016.  Not too sad to see the back of it.
Some good things happened - Juno reached Jupiter, Cassini continued to be awesome, Curiosity maintained the awesome,
I also managed to blog an entry at least once a month, as I promised to myself.

2017 - going to do more dark skies, finish the Luna 100, and learn more constellations.

Woo