Activity

I forgot to mention that you do not need a large telescope to participate. The speaker said that some of the participants use telescopes as small and 3.5″

nice Bob!

Thanks Josef! Finally, the image below, (while not a true masking effect), shows how combining a previous evening’s longer exposure of M 42 with a shorter exposure highlighting the trapezium allows some detail to be seen in the bright center of M 42 and the “bat wing” appearance of the nebula.

Great Trapezium area exposures animation! Basically we can see nebula isophots on each grooving exposure. Thanks for sharing.

Absolutely!
Doing some observing with that small refractor donated to the club last meeting (AT80ED, 3.1 inch F7). After Jay and I cleaned it up I obtained an Orion motorized mount from Randy and got out the last 2 nights to observe and image with the scope and my Orion 6.3 Mpixel camera.
The file below is an animated gif of the Trapezium area of…[Read more]

Comet 96P Machholz is back in the SOHO C3 sky swinging around the sun and at perihelium today (see the SOHO gif movie below.  The last visit I believe was around Oct. 29, 2017.

P.S.  The mouse is photoshopped!  A dead mouse was NOT found!

Bob

Hello Randy

Minutes reviewed; thanks.  (BTW the last name is spelled Fealey).  Jay and I have done an initial cleaning of the AT80ED refractor.  I have a brief Power Point presentation on our efforts I will send it to you either here as an attachment or via your email.  Haven’t had it mounted for a star diffraction test but have viewed some ter…[Read more]

that’s an awesome image!

That was an image of Thor’s Helmut, Southern Hemisphere, Telescope Live 50cm telescope, Chile, edited in PI and PS.

Mike Benson

The December 30th early evening (6:30 pm) sky was great for observing the moon and Jupiter with the 4.5 inch Starblast telescope. I had purchased the Orion 2x Shorty Barlow and was eager to try it with the Orion 6.3 megapixel camera. Was happy to easily get a sharp focus at approximately 150 magnification. In the photos below the moon was a still…[Read more]

thank you so much Josef! i knew it didn’t look as i remembered…explains it perfectly 😉
jim

Jim, I asked ChatGPT at https://chat.openai.com/chat  “Explain why is ecliptic so high now in Winter” and here is answer:

The ecliptic is the plane in which the Earth and other planets in our solar system orbit around the sun. The tilt of the Earth’s axis causes the seasons, including winter, and determines the angle at which the ecliptic…[Read more]

i thought the ecliptic was a path further south. does latitude have any effect? thanks josef!

Well, it is very simple. Mars is in Taurus, an zodiacal constellation, not so far from bright Aldebaran. Ecliptic in this area has high positive declination. Actually, Mars is not too far from ecliptic. Mars has today ecliptical latitude  2°20′, not much.