Nice Gibbous Moon

I changed the settings of my DSLR to a larger size, and I think it definitely improved my Lunar imaging. Here is a single shot, 1/320 sec, ISO 200. Processed in Photoshop. Taken yesterday, May 30.

Solar Eclipse Animated GIF

Here's an animated GIF image of the Solar Eclipse from May 20, 2012. Alignment isn't great, but this is what I got out of it.

Two Moons and a Video

Here's pictures of the moon from the last two days. Notice how the phase changes from crescent to first quarter.

 Today, May 28, 2012

May 27, 2012

Moon at High Power Video

May 20, 2012 Solar Eclipse

The Solar Eclipse was amazing! I was able to see almost all of it until the Sun got to 4* altitude. I took a picture every five minutes and am creating a time-lapse. Here are a couple single shots. Exposures range from 1/3200 sec to 1/400 sec depending on the position of the moon. ISO 400.

Observing Report May 16, 2012

Tonight was a spectacular short session. I went out at about 9:30pm. Good seeing, and limited naked-eye magnitude was about 5. My Baader Hyperion 8mm came today and I was eager to test it out. First, I pointed to Saturn and was once again stunned by the rings, the 8mm Hyperion increased the magnification to 150x while keeping the wide 68* FOV and crystal clear quality. It was a good $140 investment. I managed to observe Saturn’s first and second largest moon Titan and Rhea, as well as water-ice Tethys, and Dione. Dione was a first. Next I swung over to Hercules to try M13. It was absolutely incredible and very easy to find and see. Views were better with the 8mm and I could resolve individual stars. Averted vision definitely helped, and I can’t believe I was looking at hundreds of thousands of stars 25,000 light years away. I then observed M92, which was another bright Glob, not quite M13 like though. I called it a night at about 10:00pm. Tonight was great, I logged another moon, and two more Messier objects.

(I did not take these pictures)

M13 

M92

Sun May 13, 2012

Here's the sun as well as Sunspot 1476. Single shot with Sony A300, edited in Photoshop CS5.

Saturn with 2x Barlow

Here's Saturn with a 2x Barlow tonight. Seeing was bad, transparency was average. I'm limited to about 100 frames because I'm not great at manual tracking. Captured in SharpCap, stacked in Registax 5, processed in Photoshop CS5.

Super Moon 2012 + Saturn

The moon was at perigee tonight, the closest point to Earth in it's orbit. It also happened to be full moon, creating an unusually large "Super Moon". Of course, I had to get a picture.

Here's Saturn third attempt with my Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000. Slightly better than second attempt but color is a bit off.

Saturn, Venus, and Tycho crater

Saturn (Webcam):

Venus(Webcam):

Tycho crater (Webcam):