Star gazing

Even better, Bilbo, as it shows you're using the kit you've got

That's so true, which is why amateur Astronomers, like me, hate it when the Moon is at full phase and dead center in the night sky as the bright light drowns the nearby Stars

Well, we should first see Jupiter in May. Modern day cameras are superb regarding the quality of lens and the software that runs them. I started off, many moons ago, with a Halina 35X film camera, which had a lever to cock the shutter, and it leaked light badly!!

But it did the job and gave me hours of pleasure using it.

 

Oh, I knew that, Martin, but there's no chance of me having a late night observing and then an early morning The Planets are observable too early for me, I prefer seeing them during the night, knowing that one of my Cat's, [Jenny], is banging on my Bedroom door at 6 am prompt every morning.

 

This is one image of Saturn taken by the Cassini Probe that "floats my boat" when I see the tiny dot that is Earth..........at it's closest 746 million miles or a Billion miles at it's furthest in it's orbit.

 

Some of the images from the night of the 24th January......


You can see, in this short exposure the Stars in the center of the Orion Nebula that excite the gas and dust particles making the cloud glow

Whereas in a long exposure, to get more Nebula cloud detail, I haven't managed to keep the Stars showing.

 

I tip my hat to you, Bilbo


That's a really great shot of the Nebula. The "seeing" must have been really good, with low atmosphere turbulence and low moisture in the air. That is a shot to be proud of!!

 

I was taking images in the Observatory last night but the Moon had a halo around it so the seeing was not really good. Also, cloud appeared after about half an hour of imaging so I was reduced to finding gaps between the cloud for about an hour until the cloud cover was total. I also think that due to the moisture in the air the images won't be as sharp as they could be.

Tonight I'm in the Observatory again and the seeing is pretty good, so I'm hoping for sharper resolution images. I've settled for a setting of 75 gain and 15 offset on the camera with a shutter speed of .005s.......so we'll see how that turns out.

 

Me and my big mouth!!, the cloud has just moved in from the West in what looks like a repeat performance of last night Still I have managed a bit more experimenting with the gain and offset settings and times of exposures of the Moon and some Stars and Star clusters....and being ever the Optimist I haven't shut down the Observatory yet.!!

 

Let's hope we have clear skies to see it, Steve.

"

A blue moon is an additional full moon that appears in a subdivision of a year: either the third of four full moons in a season, or a second full moon in a month of the common calendar.
The phrase has nothing to do with the actual color of the moon, although a literal "blue moon" (the moon appearing with a tinge of blue) may occur in certain atmospheric conditions: e.g., if volcanic eruptions or fires leave particles in the atmosphere of just the right size to preferentially scatter red light."