Happy New Year! Lets get the scope out a bit more often!

 2023 - a brand new year.  

Not much for NY resolutions, but will try to get Dobby the house scope out more often this year.

Started with NYE/NYD - enjoying a good look at the Pleiades, Jupiter, Mars, and the Moon.

Used the new mobile-camera eyepiece mount and took a few photos and tried some videos to see if a frame capture got a good shot.  

Took some stunning videos of the moon.  Waxing gibeous, the terminator looked amazing.  Mountains and craters throwing fantastic shadows.

Jupiter was bright and three Galilean were clear.  As always, Jupiter's bands washed out in the photos when including the moons, but with the Moon Filter I was able to image the rings in some of the best shots I think I've ever taken of Jupiter.

Mars was very bright and a large disk in the eyepiece.  Very hard to make out any surface markings though.  I got an impression of the darker areas, but not clearly.

The bright moon washed out a lot of the nebulocity (name drop!) of the Pleiades, but as a jewel-box of stars it always satisfies.  I tried a few photos, but its not possible to have a long enough exposure to be more than a few points of the brighter stars.

I was still looking through the scope as the fireworks went off around the suburb.  Happy New Year!  A great way to see in 2023.

     

Moon occults Regulus

I managed to get out and check out some of the occultation of Regulus last night.
I missed it disappearing behind the dark limb unfortunately, but was ready for its re-emergence just over a hour later.

I was looking right at the moon through my 25mm ep, allowing me to keep an eye on the entire disk. The sudden "switching on" of the tiny intense blue light of Regulus was really striking! I took a few photos and videos after watching it for a short while, so the photos show the star not right on the edge any more.












I also took some other photos as well...

Jupiter, Centaurus and a bit of Scorpius

Inspired by the three days of ABC's Stargazing Live, and finally free of Dance-Dad duties and cloudy skies - I got Dobby out into the back yard last night for a look at a few objects.

With Jupiter in opposition (on the 8th) it is big and bright and rising at just the right time to be nice and high by the later evening, so that's the first target.

I was getting a lot of shimmer in my image, which made pushing the magnification up a bit pointless. However, there were moments of clarity where the bands were clear and sharply defined. Three moons were visible to the left of Jupiter, and yet again I experienced a little thrill to see this system. I was not able to identify the GRS, so a bit disappointed there, but moving on.

I played around with the filters a bit as well, and tried a few photos with the mobile holder device which I'm steadily redesigning in my head, as this prototype is more problematic than solution.

However, with all the time spent fiddling around with these things, I noticed an interesting event - the missing Galian moon was emerging from the right of Jupiter's disc! Very cool! As I watched, it changed from a bright speck on the edge of the planet to a distinct object and extended away from the planet in the same plane as the other moons. Nice, now I'll have to keep a watch out for other similar events on the calendars.

Some research after identified that the moon was Europa (my favorite) which had been passing between Jupiter and Earth (but I couldn't make it out in the shimmer) swinging out back into view.

After that excitement, it was on to the next target. Dr Brian Cox had mentioned Omega Centauri on StarGazing a couple of times, and got me thinking that I hadn't checked it out for a long while, and I wasn't even sure how to find it again. So it seemed a good inspiration to move on to the second round of constellation refreshers - Centaurus.
Before launching straight into star hopping, I spent some time staring straight up and comparing what I saw to the image on SkyEye. I still can't see a Centaur in it, but I'm more confident I can trace all the significant stars from Rigel Kent through Hadar and then hooking around and over Crux. I didn't check for other named stars, though - I must remember to add that to my 'training'.

Then on to Omega Centauri, star hopping from Rigel Kent for the practice. Got a real crick in the neck, as this was nearly at zenith so I had to get right down and look up through the spotter scope.

Other than the contortions, finding Omega Centauri (NGC5139) wasn't too hard. I even deliberately moved away from it and star hopped to it again.

The light conditions unfortunately made it not as spectacular as it should be, but even then it's impressive. Nice to think I'm looking at the remains of a dwarf galaxy that our galaxy has stripped much of its mass from. Also interesting that I'm looking right at (well, in the direction of) a black hole of some 40,000 SM.

I've been meaning to start collecting the Caldwell Catalogue, so this can be the first official tick on that list...
Omega Centauri, C80 - Tick!

Next session will be to explore Centaurus more and tick off some other targets.

Then I noticed on the SkyEye map that M83 was close to where I was looking, so I decided to have a go at that. It looked like it might be difficult again, it was even closer to the zenith, so I tried out the indirect navigation mode on SkyEye. With rubber bands I attached the mobile to the spotter scope, and then swung around and registered Jupiter, Spica, Antares, and Rigel Kent to get it oriented. It seemed to know where it was pointing accurately after that, so my failure to find M83 was either because it wasn't dark enough, or I just failed. It was getting late...

The final random target was M4, which I was reminded of while registering Antares. I was intending to play around a bit more with SkyEye indirect mode, but then the battery died. Fortunately, it is not hard to find, as it is very close to Antares. Again, the light conditions made it dim, but still was nice to see. Looking at my notes later, it's been almost exactly a year since I last looked at it!

Before going in for the night, I had a last look at Jupiter and noticed that it was much steadier now. While it may have been an improvement in the atmospheric conditions, I'm sure now that Dobby being at ambient temperature helped as well. Another reason to plan ahead whenever possible and get the scope cooling down for a while. Last night was unplanned though, so you get that.

I'm really Jones-ing for a dark sky now.

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)

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.

International Observe the Moon Night

October 8th is International Observe the Moon Night, so although unable to make it international - I did observe the Moon from near the front gate this evening.

Despite days of cloud cover, we actually had a fine day today and I was able to see a lovely quarter moon this evening once it got dark, with clear skys directly above.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the telescope outside until later in the evening, by which time another cloud bank was starting to drift over the horizon, and the whispy leading edge of it was already starting to obscure the Moon.

Undaunted, I still spent some time observing using my 30mm, 17mm, 8mm and 6mm eyepieces and the Lunar filter.  Once the cloud started thickening up, I no longer required the filter.

I also snapped a few pictures with the phone held to the EP, which are displayed here...

This is my first official observation of the Moon where I've started crossing off items from the Lunar 100.  This evening accounted for :

Map #34 - Lacus Mortis - A strange crater with rille and ridge
Map #72 - Atlas dark-halo craters - Explosive volcanic pits on the floor of Atlas
Map #20 - Posidonius - Floor-fractured crater
Map #10 - Mare Crisium - Mare contained in large circular basin
Map #28 -Hipparchus - First drawing of a single crater

 

Details taken through the 6mm eyepiece.  Looked great, but was loosing detail due to the thin cloud drifting in.  These craters don't feature on the L100 list.

Then the cloud really rolled in and that was it for IOtMN.

Achievement unlocked! Five in a row!

Did it! Got out of bed at 5am and Weis and I viewed the cosmic wagon train of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury and the Moon stretched across the sky.

As predicted by Stellarium

We even got a bonus ISS sighting at 0530 as well - well, Weis did, I was distracted fiddling with the camera and didn't realize what she had spotted.

When we first got out Jupiter was clear to the left of the pine tree, and then heading Eastwards there was Spica, then Mars, then the bushes and fortunately Saturn was on the other side of those.

Jupiter

Spica and Mars

Acturis and Saturn

 
We checked out Jupiter, Mars and Saturn with Dobby - I'm really enjoying the range of EPs I now have (even if they are simple Skywatchers) Used the 17mm, the 8mm and then the 8mm plus the Barlow on Saturn. Magnificent views as the sky continued to offer great seeing and transparency!  I would estimate the seeing as an 8/10 and the transparency could have been 10/10.

Jupiter was beautiful.  The bands clearly visible and the four moons clear with three on the right of the planet and one to the left.  No details were clear on Mars, but it was bright and very salmon coloured.  Tried a few of the filters, but they didn't help to reveal any extra details this time.  Saturn at high magnification with the Barlow and the 8mm was absolutely gorgous. 

I took a few photos using 6 second exposures, the best of which are below.  Some trailing is evident.  I set the ISO to 100, use manual focusing and let the camera determine its own apeture.

By now Venus and Mercury were rising, but Dobby couldn't get the right angle on those.So I took the finder scope off Dobby and used that hand-held to check out Venus.  Always like seeing the phases of Venus - this time it was gibeous.

Then a thin crescent moon rose and I snapped a bunch of photos as dawn broke, and it was clearly time to wrap up the observations and head back to bed to grab a few more hours of sleep.

Scorpio and Saturn

A great shot of Scorpio

Venus and Mercury over the house

Shot of the evening: Venus, Mercury and the crescent Moon

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.

Moon Occults Saturn

Got to spot a not-to-common happening - on the evening of August 4th, the Moon occulted Saturn.
I missed the initial moving behind the Moon (Dad duties), but was able to set up Dobby for the big reveal.
The evening was very brisk, the previous two mornings being the coldest on record for some 16 years, but the sky was mostly clear and the seeing was good.
Enjoyed looking at the half moon for a while, snapping some pictures with the mobile at the eyepiece, and then enjoyed seeing Saturn start to peek over the lit limb of the Moon.
Swapping from the beautiful overview of the 25mm ep to the higher mag 10mm allowed me to try a few more pictures.
Quite a novelty, and a beautiful viewing session.

Partial solar eclipse

Wednesday, 14 November.  0730 - 0900

A beautiful clear morning dawned for the 54% partial solar eclipse that we were to enjoy today.  We had decided at short notice to take the telescope and light box to the school again.  
As the show was going to be over by 0845 there was going to be a fair opportunity for the kids and teachers to see what was going on if they wanted.
By the time we were set up the eclipse had started and there was about an eighth of the moon already over the face of the sun.  
We took a couple of photos and the kids started arriving soon after that.  

 Setting up at the school.

 Just in time - the moons moving in now.

 Almost as good as it is going to get.  A good amount of sunspot activity to be seen as well.

 That's the max for today!

 Some of the kids checking it out.
Again, like for the transit of Venus, it is so much fun sharing this with the kids (and teachers!) at the school.  Lots of questions kept me on my toes, and it was clear they were thinking about what was going on.

Will have to find an excuse to do this again next year somehow.