Recent Astro pics

Haven't been on GC for a bit, the winter months lure me back to my true love, astronomy. Here's a couple of recent ones taken with my new auto-guided set-up [still trying to get used to it].

Thanks for looking
SF

The Moon, with Jupiter added to show image scale in the telescope.


The Moon and Venus at conjunction, March 2012 (Jupiter was nearby too, a magnificent sight)

 

Welcome back Sausage,

Excelent pics Can you see the phases of Venus with that?

 

Brilliant shots, just wish I could do that sort of stuff.

 

And your re-entry question is, without resorting to going by constelations, could you tell me where to look for this Garrards Comet? Time of night, compass reading and elevation ? Cheers, Tony.

 

Thanks Guys
The first image (with Jupiter) was shot with a modified webcam (makes it act like a fancy DSLR with cooling etc), 17Gb of image data in about 2 minutes!!!!... doesn't take long to fill the hard drive in the laptop!!!!
The wideangle was with a normal DSLR (Canon 350d), with a 70-300mm lens. This method only requires a tripod and the use of a cable release (or the self timer) to prevent camera/shutter shake.

Ziggy, you can see the phases of Venus, any small telescope, or decent binoculars will show the different phases of the Planet.

Tony, Garradd, is an early morning Comet (ie 0200 GMT), and will be visible in binoculars throughout this month. Here's a link to the BAA Comet section page for the comet - it has coordinates for the comet although they are in RA/DEC format, shouldnt be too hard to convert them? Basically its quite high up looking North/NorthEast, and will look like a faint "blob" in bins, when sweeping the area

BAA Comet Section
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jds/09p1.uk

and Comet Chasing is also another good resource:
http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/

Thanks for looking
SF

 

Toooooo much information in the B.A.A. site. I'll use the other one you were so kind to stick up. Cheers, Tony.