fealeybob14

How great to see the Falcon launch and then the first stage returning to Port Canaveral in person, John!  I am so envious!

It is disturbing to think Dr. Dudnik and other Ukrainian scientists may have to suspend their work because of the Russian invasion.  Even Russian scientists are against this war…[Read more]

Jupiter, approaching solar conjunction, appears now in SOHO’s C3 camera field of view https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/1024/latest.html.

So glad you guys got to see this launch!  Seems to be a great observation site (Kayak Beach), however difficult to get to.  Followed it on the Space X website and as usual the live coverage was awesome https://www.spacex.com/launches/cosmo-skymed/

Bob

John, did you get to see the Space X launch of the Italian satellite on the 31st ?  I know it was scrubbed 4 days in a row.  Sad if you missed it.

Bob

Thanks John and Kathy for the picture info!  Hoping your weather and SpaceX are ‘go’ for today’s launch!

Very nice John and Kathy.  What kind of camera/lens was Kathy using?

Would love to see a launch also John.  Very nice observation!

Another interesting observation appears in the SOHO C3 camera video (2 posts back) covering the last 3 days. On the 20th Mercury appears at the 10 o’clock position and moves to the right against the background stars of Capricorn.  As it does it appears to disappear!  So little of it…[Read more]

Brilliant Venus, approaching inferior conjunction, is now visible in C3 SOHO fov.  See above for a video (over the next 10 days) of the planets conjunction with the sun.  See also https://spaceweather.com/ for photos and details of the conjunction.

Wow! Did anyone get a photo of comet Leonard and M3 ? (See https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=180044).  Hopefully we’ll have a nice binocular and small telescope view over the next month or two.

Having a recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of a planet you have photographed really helps one recognize subtle structures visible in one’s blurry pics.  In the attached image the Hubble image is part of yearly maps of each planet taken as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL.  Check out Hubble’s recent photo…[Read more]

Whoops!  The Frontenac SP event noted above was on Nov 6th and not the 7th!

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.