Another month goes by

So another month goes by and just one night for me of clear sky for some imaging, the current project is M96 and associated galaxies in the field of view, more on that to follow. But for now a full moon passes and a new moon offers fleeting new views. I say new views as a new neighbour a few doors down the road has cut down a a large number of trees from his back garden offering me a long missed sight of setting the new moon and Venus. Whilst dodging clouds I managed a few video captures and after a run through Autostakkert and Registax for Wavelet processing.  

This image is a composite of 2 images both the best 100 frames from a 500 frame AVI at the 1080 resolution from the ASIair Pro video capture.

Reducing the resolution does increase the frame rate but on a camera that is a full res 6 frames a second I am not expecting amazing results from a 2 minute capture. But here we go a couple of images of some lovely craters. 

Patavius is the large crater here at a 177 km in diameter and a depth of 3.4km. The multiple central peaks extend nearly 2km high.

I also had a few minutes to capture a quick video of Venus flickering like a jewel as it dropped into the trees. Stellarium shows a just under 80% disc illumination. My image shows the same. Not bad for about 100 frames stacked.

Transit of Venus remembered

I thought I would get this in a day early. Memories of 8th June 2004. I had a wonderful opportunity to witness a transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun. A sight not observed by any human currently alive before that day. A transit of Venus occurs twice in eight years then nothing for another 105 years. So the first was visible 8/6/04 and the second was only visible in the UK for the final hour of transit around 5.00am on the 6/6/12. Unfortunately it was cloudy for me here for the second. I was completely disappointed because what I saw 8 years earlier blew my mind. The day started with a beautiful sunrise as I transported my scope to Dad's back garden for a better unobstructed view. During the set up the sky was a little unpredictable with some high cloud that I thought would spoil the view, but eventually cleared to reveal a blue sky. From start to finish over nearly six hours I was truly blessed with clear skies and some wonderful images, videos and I even appeared on a live broadcast on radio Norfolk mid transit. An astro bucket list item well and truly ticked.

Planetary Alignment

We had a night flight travelling home from our holiday in the Dominican Republic last week. Our seats were nicely positioned to get a view and a snapshot of the Alignment of Mercury, Venus & Jupiter. Sorry it's a bit shakey. The best one I could get travelling at 500mph. Taken over the Atlantic ocean 700 miles East of Bermuda at approx 35,000 ft.

Moon & Venus

Taken on the evening of the 25th Feb The moon passes close by the planet Venus At the time this was taken the moon was 248,819 miles Venus was 87,104,049 miles away making the moon a cool 350 times closer to us than venus. I just about managed to fit them into the same frame. I deliberatly over exposed the picture to get earthshine.It is caused by sunlight that reflects off the Earth onto the Moon's night side.

Dynamic Duo Venus & Mercury

Had a break in the cloud coverage to take this pic of Venus & Mercury
taken @ 85mm with a .5 second exposure on the 8th April at 20.14
I would have liked to wait a little longer for a darker sky, but the clouds kept rolling in.

Sorry there has'nt been much activity here recently still stuck doing nights. Hopefully a light at the end of the tunnel coming soon though.

Good to see my fellow bloggers are producing some great work while I am locked (literally) inside. Take a few minutes to look at their stirling efforts please.

Solar

As this is a new site for me I have found a few of the nice images I have taken in the past.

Here are a couple of my Images from the Venus Transit of 8th June 2004.

On this beautifully clear summer morning we experienced a once-in-a-lifetime rare astrological and astronomical event. Approximately every 121 years, the planet Venus moves between the Sun and our line of vision so that Venus passes directly across the face of the Sun. When the Moon passes across the face of the Sun it's called an eclipse. When a planet passes across the Sun's face it's more precisely known as an occultation.

Telescope used was my 10" Orion Optics F4.8 reflector on a Vixen Polaris GP mount.

I used a baader solar filter on the scope and a yellow filter over the camera lens.

I was very pleased with the results.