fealeybob14

Thanks darkskyjim (should I just say Jim!? ) .  Our web page highlights the Nov 7th Frontenac State Park event and the images of that are awesome.  Sadly, I had to stay in Rochester where the sky and seeing was excellent but not like the skies over Frontenac.  Wow!

Later (about 2am), I did wake, got to my observatory and as the skies were st…[Read more]

Thanks Darkskyjim! Below is a Jupiter photo from 10-30-2021 taken with a 10 in. SCT and the 6.3 M pixel color camera. Staking of 150 frames with Registax6.

Observing and doing some astrophotography 10/8 from my observatory. Skies were dark and clear but humidity high. Tried my hand for first time photographing nebulae. M 27 (Dumbell) was a good starting point for me and it is well placed in the sky these nights. Used my right angle finder scope (50mm dia.) with removable eyepiece and put in the…[Read more]

A modern video demonstrating the archaic observation of what a planet is … “a celestial body distinguished from the fixed stars by having an apparent motion of its own”.  In this case the planet Mars (to the left of the  sun moves left against the background stars which all move to the right.

Thanks Josef!  (So nice to see you on the bike trail  yesterday!)

Tif file was too large.

Not sure why. the images I posted recently look so poor on the website. I’ll post a tiff file version and see what happens.

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