October 2021

October 31^st 1115 GMT Sun and Moon

 

The waning crescent moon was getting more slender and nearer to the Sun. I snapped it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

 

 

I then added my full-aperture Baader solar filter to the set-up and reduced the exposure time to 1/2000 second exposure.

October 30th 0930 GMT Sun and Moon

There were some clear spells and I managed to do a quick photo shoot before cloud rolled in again. I snapped the Sun with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1000 second exposure. I caught a faint imprint of some small sunspots.

The Moon shot was more successful, capturing the waning crescent phase and its craters. I used my DSLR at b300mm focal length, ISO 400 and 1/200 second exposure.

October 26th Cassiopeia Reprocessed

With wall-to-wall cloud, I revisited some photos from August 1st 2020. I used the Exposure function in GIMP and adjusted the brightness and contrast.

October 25th 0450 GMT Betelguese and Moon

 It was cloudy when I got up but cleared after Breakfast. I checked Betelguese and confirmed its magnitude of 0.5. This confirmed that it had faded quite rapidly but seemed to have stabilised.

I also snapped the waning gibbous moon at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

October 24^th 1725 GMT Venus

After another wet and cloudy day, there was a clear spell after sunset. I photographed Venus with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. It showed a clear gibbous phase.

October 24^th Reprocess

I had wall-to-wall cloud on Friday and Saturday, so reprocessed an old Moon shot from August 1st 2020.

I also composed an image with the Moon and Jupiter's moons, using the above photo and two more.

October 21^st 2020 GMT Moon

The conditions had deteriorated by nightfall, so I was met with strong moonlight, scattered by thin cloud. There were only two sensible photographic targets, the Moon and Jupiter. As I had not unpacked and stored any telescopes, I just tried to snap Jupiter's moons, in addition to our own. It was one of those all-too-frequent days where it was a case of struggling to get anything at all, rather than shooting a lot of deep sky and constellation images.

I snapped the Moon at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second.

Despite getting a clear shot at Jupiter, I managed to capture only one moon, although I caught a few background stars.

October 21^st 1130 GMT Sun

Fortunately, the clear sky continued to lunchtime and I snapped the Sun with the same settings as the day before.

October 21^st 0640 GMT Moon

The Moon was up but behind cloud before I left for work. It was appearing and disappearing on the way to work but I played Russian Roulette with my journey and arrival time and stopped in a layby while conditions looked stable. The Moon was lower in the sky and thought it would set before I reached work. With observations and photos being sparse during the month, I just had to take the shot. I used 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure.

October 20^th 1055 GMT Sun

I had seen a sunspot on the Learmonth and Big Bear images and snapped the Sun at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/2000 second exposure. I had established it as my "go to" method, using filters. The weather was not good but I managed to find a gap in the cloud.

October 16^th 1830 GMT Moon

Conditions were rather poor, with few stars showing and even Saturn was clouded out. I snapped the Moon at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. Even then, it was under-exposed and it needed some processing to bring out the detail.

October 15^th Lunar Reprocess from June1st 2000

I reprocessed an old moon shot to bring out more detail.

October 13^th 1440 GMT Sun

I snapped the Sun at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/2000 second exposure. The large sunspot was about to rotate to the far side of the Sun.

October 13^th Lunar Reprocess from May 1st 2000

I reprocessed an old daylight moon shot to bring out more detail.

October 11^th 1800 GMT Moon

 

The Moon was low down in the west. There was cloud around and it obscured Venus. I used my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/125 second exposure.

I also caught some hint of equatorial cloud belts on Jupiter.

October 11^th 0500 GMT Betelguese

 

I had a quick look at the dawn sky and Betelguese seemed to have brightened to about magnitude 0.2.

October 10th 1120 GMT Sun

This image was not quite so sharp but clearly showed the rotation of the sunspot since my last photo.

October 6th 1210 GMT Sun

I managed a nice, sharp sunspot image at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/2000 second exposure.

October 5th 1935 GMT Meteor Hunt

I had a bit of clear sky but was busy, so set my camera to detect Draconid meteors at 18mm focal length, ISO 6400  and 6 seconds exposure.

At 1940 GMT,  I caught a nice shot of Ursa Minor, with parts of Draco.

At 2020 GMT, the constellations rotated to show Vega in the field of view.

At 2035 GMT, a short but bright meteor trail appeared near Ursa Minor.

At 2107 GMT, I saw a bright "guest star" near Polaris. It was quite bright, about magnitude 1.5. My immediate thought was another head-on meteor but when I zoomed in, the track was curved! No extravagant claims of little green men but  wondered what it was.

At 2111 GMT, I saw a bright, broken trail in Draco towards the bottom left.

At 2131 GMT, a similar event occurred but, this time, it was near a star.

I was excited when I found what looked like a meteor at 2154 GMT but closer inspection showed it to be a broken trail.

October 5th 0745 GMT Sun 

I snapped the Sun at the more sensible settings of 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1000 second exposure. I caught new sunspot activity but only just.

  

October 3rd 0950 GMT Sun and Moon

The waning crescent moon was thin but high in the south. I snapped it at 300mm focal length, ISO 400 and 1/80 second exposure.

I accidentally used the same settings for the Sun but took further shots at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1000 second exposure.

Unfortunately, no shots worked.

October 1st Jupiter's Moons and Deep Sky

It was nice to start the month with all four of the moons discovered by Galileo on show.  I used my normal settings.

I snapped the Hyades at 70mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 8 seconds exposure.

     

I used the same settings for the Pleiades (M45).

I went for the Pleiades (M45) at 300mm focal length and 2 seconds exposure. Although I captured stars, I had much better results in the past.