Blue Moon 2012

This full moon is special. It is the second one of August, called a Blue moon. It is not actually blue. This event won't happen again until July 2015. Picture is 1/1250 sec., ISO 200.

97% Waxing Gibbous Moon

Here's tonights moon. A 97% Waxing Gibbous. 1/800 sec., ISO 200. Single shot. Thanks for looking!

Remembering Neil Armstrong

Sadly, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died today from heart surgery complications.  Here is the full story. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/neil-armstrong-moon-mystery-man-022250193.html

I wanted to get a picture of the moon tonight in his remembrance. I don't have my DSLR with me so I had to get an afocal shot with my iPod. Here it is.

Mars, Saturn, Spica, Moon Conjunction

Mars, Saturn, Spica, and the moon formed a nice square in the western sky tonight. I was able to get a picture. 10 sec. exposure, ISO 400.

Also, here's the 23% Waxing Crescent from tonight.

14% Waxing Crescent August 20, 2012

I was finally able to get out tonight, I've been busy the past week with school. Here's a quick image, 1/50 sec., ISO 200. I'm not really a fan of taking pictures of young crescent moons, they are difficult to get pictures of and process.

New image from Night Sky Time-lapse!

I took all the photos from my night sky time-lapse and stacked them in StarStax for Mac. Here's what came out.

Perseid Meteor Shower!

Tonight was a huge success! I not only made my first night sky time-lapse video, I also observed more than three dozen meteors from the annual Perseid meteor shower. At 8:45pm I went out and set my Sony A300 DSLR on a tripod pointed East. I took 75 pictures, 15 sec. each, ISO 1600. I then loaded them on my laptop and created a time-lapse movie. I went back out at about 10:30pm to go meteor watching. I saw 37 meteors from 10:30pm to 12:00am. About half of this time I was fully focused on looking East, so I probably could have seen more. I also got an amazing look at the Milky Way near zenith. Tonight was an amazing night, I'm definitely looking forward to more meteor showers!

(Watch full screen)

Curiosity lands on Mars!

Curiosity has landed on Mars! The difficult landing maneuver was executed successfully. Here are a few images from tonight.

First images from Curiosity

Curiosity's shadow

Here's my telescope pointed at Mars about an hour before landing.