fealeybob14

Saturn on 9/23/2021.6 Seeing was better than last 2 days but certainly not great. Again used a 10″ Meade SCT with the Orion 6.3 M pixel color camera. Use Autostakker + Registax 6 to enhance.

While under poor seeing conditions Jupiter still put on a good show just after midnight 9-19-2021. Image below used Meade 10″ SCT and Orion 6.3 M pixel color camera. Some image stacking with Registax6 and Photoshop Elements enhancement.

Bringing the StarBlast to the soccer fields tonight.  Should be good for the moon craters Josef mentioned!

Bob

Ugh! Couldn’t be there that night. However I did some observing of the sun the day of 9-6-2021. As many of you may know the sun is ramping up it’s sunspot activity and currently is quite impressive. Yesterday I took a short video using the Starblast 4.5 in reflector with the Orion 6.3M pixel color camera. A single frame, (enhanced a little in…[Read more]

Awesome John!  Will have to get a star field photo of the nova region soon!

Looks like a small comet heading into the sun on 8-10.  Check out the SOHO C3 animation on that day. https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/Theater/

Looks like Mercury is entering the fov of SOHO C3 camera today (July 25th)

Last evening (5/28 about 9:25 pm) a close conjunction of Venus and Mercury was visible in the NW.  A nice image was obtained using the Starblast 4.5 in. telescope with the Orion 6.3 mpixel camera.  I added the Telrad inner circle (diameter 0.5 degree) for a reference.

Two bright open star clusters in Taurus (Hyades lower circle and Pleiades upper) now appear in the latest SOHO C3 image. The bright star (black arrow) is Aldebaran which is not a member of the Hyades cluster, but is much closer to us and along the line of sight to the cluster. (also see the ongoing C3 video above)

The Pleiades (circled in red) have now entered the SOHO C3 field of view.

Mercury prominent now just to the right of the crescent moon!

Lake Louise should have dark skies but there are lots of mature trees. The closest area (swimming beach) to the parking lot looks out over the small lake and western-southwestern skies seem to be non-obstructed by trees. Areas along the Lake view trail have no trees to block the sky (see map of the park here…[Read more]

C2 SOHO video of the same comet here: https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif

Note the small Kreutz comet moving to the sun on May 9 and 10 in the above SOHO C3 video. It did not survive! See also today’s
SpaceWeather page https://spaceweather.com/.

Todays spaceweather has an interesting picture and description of Mercury’s sodium tail. https://spaceweather.com/

Today (4/25) the C3 video shows Mercury (racing towards its best appearance in mid May in the western sky) nearly passing Venus in the C3 field of view.

Have to agree with Josef, Mike a very nice picture with you new scope!  (BTW what camera did you use?).  Your new scope should also be great on planetary pics.

I am still amazed how SOHO C3 (above) provides a window into the inner planets and the sun.  Watch how the brightness of Mercury on the right is decreasing while that of Venus (left) is increasing.  Note also how Mercury is moving faster around the sun and passing the background stars than is Venus.

Mercury has now joined Venus in the SOHO C3 fov.  Both are near their superior conjunction (Venus past and Mercury approaching).  The C3 gif video also shows a possible CME from today.