January 2024

January 28th 1050 GMT Sun 

 

There was a lot of thin cloud around, with some patches of blue sky. For a change, especially as it was a weekend, I photographed the Sun with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

Although the image captured some sunspots, the cloud ruined the result. 

January 26th 2000 GMT Moon 

 

It had seemed decades since I had attempted a moon shot with my telescope. Conditions were far from perfect, with lots of moving cloud. I took some shots at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

January 24th 2100 GMT Moon and Jupiter's moons 

 

Had it been a normal Wednesday evening, I might have ventured out with my telescope but I had an early meeting the next day.

 

I tried to use manual and live view focus to try to get Jupiter's moons. I used 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and a second exposure. I did not use my usual exposure time of 2 seconds, due to moonlight. Although the shot worked, I only caught one moon.

 

I changed the ISO setting down to 100 and the exposure to 1/1000 second to try to capture the Moon.

January 24th 1900 GMT Moon and Stars

 

There was moonlight being scattered by cloud and not much was visible.

 

The Moon and Jupiter were too far apart in the sky to photograph, even with my phone camera totally zoomed out.

 

I tried photographing the Moon with the bright stars Sirius and then Capella.

January 22nd 2150 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

It was nor quite clear, with most objects looking somewhat hazy. I snapped the Moon and Jupiter with my phone camera.

January 18th 1700 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

Aside from the cold and rapidly falling temperature,  I wanted to catch the Moon and Jupiter when they were very close. I caught them together at 300mm focal length and tried various combinations of settings to catch features on the Moon and Jupiter's moons, although the sky was too bright to guarantee success. Unfortunately, nothing worked.

January 18^th 1210 GMT Sun

 

The lunchtime sky was clear, enabling me to see three sunspots with my binoculars and filters. They had moved since my previous viewing three days before.

January 17th 1930 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

Conditions were clearer than the evening before. The Moon was much closer to Jupiter. I photographed them first with my phone camera then with my DSLR at 70mm focal length at various settings  I then zoomed in to 300mm focal length, again using various settings to photograph the Moon separately and even tried Jupiter's moons hand-held, something I had done only once before successfully. 

When processing I got off to a bad start as the phone camera shot was blurred and Jupiter appeared as a curve.

I had more luck with the DSLR shot of them together.

There was just a hint of cloud belts om Jupiter.

Unfortunately, neither the ,moon shots nor those of Jupiter's moons worked.

   

January 16th 1725 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

After a cloudy lunchtime and cloudier afternoon, there was some clear sky at dusk.

I snapped the Moon and Jupiter with my camera phone then followed up with my DSLR.

I did not manage to catch the close alignment on my DSLR but I caught the Moon and Jupiter separately and overlaid them onto the above photo to create a composite image.

January 16th 1910 GMT Binocular Session 

After darkness fell, there was quite a lot of cloud around. The Moon was bright and showed a few craters near the terminator. Jupiter showed one moon clearly and a hint of a second.

I could make out the Orion Great Nebula (M42) but only just. The Hyades showed quite well, although I had to move the binoculars round in order to see all of them. The Pleaides (M45) showed only about 20 stars and Melotte 20 in Perseus was also rather sparse in appearance. The other deep sky objects were clouded out.      

January 15th 2150 GMT Phone Camera Shoot

 

It was not perfectly clear but I tried fiddling about with my phone camera settings, setting the ISO to 800 and increasing the sensitivity to +2EV. I aimed at Orion and Sirius.

 

I was lucky to catch a meteor, brighter than Sirius flash from the horizon through Canis Minor. It was a great sight and one of the things that make astronomy interesting.

January 15^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

The midday sun was in a clearer patch of sky than the day before. A binocular scan revealed 4 sunspots, two more than the day before.

January 14^th 1045 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the Sun through cloud. I was somewhat disappointed not to see more sunspots, as there were some on the professional observatory images. The interesting thing is that the large sunspot I had seen three days before, had split into two, a phenomenon that is not unknown. The Sun is a strange place indeed.

January 13th Astronomical Mug

I found some old photos of a mug I had made at a team building event at work. Unfortunately, it was broken but the intended targets were Orion and the Pleiades (Seven Sisters). Not my best images of either object but a unique take on them.

January 11^th 1220 GMT Sun

 

By the standards of the autumn and the turn of the new year, a minor miracle happened! Although there was plenty of cloud around, not unknown in January in England, I had a clear view of the Sun through my binoculars and filters. The two sunspots I had seen the day before had rotated. The larger one was showing better, as it moved away from the edge of the solar disc.

January 10^th 2050 GMT Constellations

The sky was clear, well. to start with! My intention was to capture Orion and the surrounding region, then Camelopardalis. Needless to say, it did not go to plan when cloud moved in from the east.

Instead, I took a few frames of Cassiopeia at 18mm focal length, ISO 1600 and 30 seconds exposure. I also took some dark frames. I stacked using Sequator and finished in GIMP. Not only does the  photo show the Milky Way but also the Perseus Double Cluster and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31).

                            

January 10^th 1230 GMT Sun

 

I had a rare patch of clear sky. A new, larger sunspot had rotated onto the solar disc to join the one I had spotted the day before.

January 9th 2055 GMT Orion and Betelguese 

 

I tried fiddling with my phone camera to photograph Orion but failed.
 
I retried with the camera default settings which was better. I took ten frames with the hope of stacking. I did not get the stack to work and processed a single frame.

 
I estimated that Betelguese had faded to about magnitude 0.4.

January 9^th 1215 GMT Sun

 

My binoculars and filters revealed a single sunspot, although there were many fainter ones on the GONG website.

January 6th 2050 GMT Binocular Session 

 

It was my first night-time binocular session of the year. Conditions were somewhat hazy, dissuading me from any photography.

 

Jupiter was high in the south. I could see a Moon on each side. 

 

The Pleiades (M45) were disappointing, showing a maximum of 20 stars. The Hyades all showed, as the main cluster members are quite bight. I cannot get the whole cluster in my field of view, so had to scan round the area to see each star. 

 

The Orion Great Nebula (M42) showed surprisingly well,  given that the Pleiades didn't. However, I could not make out M35, the star cluster in Gemini.

 

Melotte 20 showed its main stars but was probably in an area of haze.

January 6th 0115 GMT Betelguese 

 

Conditions were cloudy and hazy but some stars were visible. I could not see the Pleiades but Betelguese and the nearby bright stars were clear. Possibly Betelguese may have faded a bit but I thought its brightness was nearer magnitude 0.4 than 0.5.

January 5^th 1215 GMT Sun

 

The pale winter Sun hung low in the south. My binoculars revealed four sunspots but the professional observatories showed several more that might have been visible in my telescope or from the southern hemisphere, where the Sun is higher in the sky this time of year.

January 5th 0650 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

The Moon had rotated closer to Venus in the dawn sky than the previous morning. I snapped them with my phone camera.

January 4th 0720 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

The Moon was approaching Venus in the dawn sky and was within range of my phone camera.

January 3rd 2040 GMT Betelguese 

 

I had a quick look outside to see if the sky was clear. Unfortunately, the most interesting part of sky from the Pole Star down towards the horizon was cloudy, preventing me from seeing any Quadrantid meteors. There was a bit of clear sky to the south east long enough to check out Betelguese. Its brightness had appeared steady at magnitude 0.4.

January 2^nd 1350 GMT Sun

 

After a very wet evening, night and morning, it unexpectedly cleared enough to see our nearest and dearest star. Seeing the Sun again was like seeing an old friend I hadn’t seen for years. I saw just two small sunspots but, with such a poor December, it felt like a victory, although maybe a small one.

January 1st 0210 GMT Moon and Regulus

 

An hour after my Moon shot, it cleared a bit more and I saw it close to Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo. I snapped it with my phone camera.

January 1st 0110 GMT Moon 

 

The old year had not long given way to the new. Astronomically speaking, 2023 had been poor, with lots of cloud. 

Rather like the solar session the day before, there was lots of moving cloud. I snapped a few photos of the Moon with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second exposure. 

Unfortunately, I did not get any useable photos.

December 2023

December 31st 1140 GMT Sun

The Sun was low in the sky, despite being nearly midday and at its highest point in the sky. There was moving cloud, which cleared enough for me to see it through my binoculars and filters. I could not see any sunspots, though.

December 29th 2350 GMT Moon and Betelguese 

 

The cloud and haze from the day persisted into the evening. I snapped the Moon with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second exposure.

 
 
Any estimate of the brightness of Betelguese could not be perfectly accurate in cloudy conditions. It seemed to be about magnitude 0.4.

December 29^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

A window of opportunity opened for a rare sliver of astronomical activity. The cloud had thinned enough to let me see the Sun through my binoculars and filters. Unfortunately, the activity from earlier in the month had subsided, revealing just a single sunspot.

December 21st 1855 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

It was a case of cloud-dodging again, as I caught the Moon and Jupiter together with my phone camera.

December 21st 1645 GMT Moon 

 

I still had a cold, so I snapped the Moon from our back door at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second exposure.

December 21^st 1200 GMT Sun

 

As for much of 2023, it was a case of dodging clouds and managing to record a few sunspots visible through my binoculars and filters. I was hoping that 2024 might bring in a new era of sunspot viewing and photography, especially as it was getting closer to solar maximum. However, I should have been grateful that a haul of no less than nine sunspots seen through any sort of astronomical instrument was a good result.

December 19th 2100 GMT Betelguese

 

There were clear spells and Betelguese was about as bright as Procyon. Both were brighter than Rigel, due to extinction but noticeably brighter than Aldebaran, which was much higher in the sky. I concluded that Betelguese was about magnitude 0.4.

December 19th 1700 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I snapped the Moon and Jupiter in the dusk sky with my phone camera.

December 14^th 1320 GMT Sun

 

The clouds eventually cleared enough for me to scan the Sun with my binoculars and filters. There was a lot of activity, with the region where the double sunspot appeared a few days before turning even more active. The bad news was that it was due to rotate off in a few days.

December 11^th 1230 GMT Sun

 

The clouds cleared long enough to show that the two sunspots that I had seen 2 days before had rotated and were still close together.

December 11th 0550 GMT Venus

I woke up early, too early but it gave me a chance to photograph Venus with my Mak and DSLR at 1,54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second exposure. It was showing a distinct gibbous phase, which would probably not be detectable with my DSLR alone.

December 9th 2235 GMT Meteor Hunt 

 

I aimed a camera at Gemini in the hope of catching some Geminid shower meteors. I used my usual settings. I caught a bright one almost immediately.

 

While checking my camera at 2252 GMT, I saw a faint meteor in Orion.

December 9th 1250 GMT Sun

The Sun managed to find a gap in the clouds. Well, scientifically, we know that isn't true and neither the Sun nor the Earth's weather systems have any sort of consciousness that can be controlled or influenced by humans. Still, human perception can deceive us into thinking otherwise. More importantly, I saw two sunspots through my binoculars and filters.'

December 8^th 1015 GMT Sun

 

The Sun was shining through a layer of thin haze. Despite the activity I had been following on the professional observatories, I did not see any sunspots.

December 6th 0610 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

There was some unexpected clear sky, following cloud cover for several days. I snapped the two objects together with my DSLR at 18mm focal length, ISO 800 and 1/50 second exposure.

I then changed lenses and photographed each of them at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/100 second exposure. I did not achieve focus for Venus, although the Moon came out.

I combined the two photos.

December 2^nd 1200 GMT Sun

 

It was very misty but I managed to see five sunspots. It was nice to start the month.

December 1st 2030 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

Although the angular separation between the two objects was quite large, I was still able to capture them together with my camera phone at 0.5x zoom.

December 1st 0030 GMT Betelguese

 

 I had a quick look outside when letting our dogs out. Despite the prescene of nearby moonlight, Betelguese easily outshone Procyon. so I estimated its magnitude to be 0.2.

November 2023

November 30th 1930 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

It was clearing. The Moon had not long risen. I could not get it and Jupiter in the same field of view with my phone camera, so I zoomed out to 0.5× and got both objects in comfortably.

November 28th 1800 GMT Moon and Jupiter

There was a brief period where I could photograph the Moon with Jupiter with my phone camera. The wide panorama was near the limit of what I could do with my DSLR at 18mm focal length but it was a comfortable shot with my phone camera. 

     

November 25th 1655 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I snapped the Moon and Jupiter from the car park by the bogs in Chippenham. I took one shot at normal zoom plus a close-up.

November 25th 0930 GMT Sun

The sky was clear and I checked the Sun with my binoculars and filters. I was expecting a bit more excitement, as the sunspots rotated closer to the centre of the solar disc. Instead, there was less activity than the two days.  

November 25th 0010 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

In a few hours more, the Moon and Jupiter moved closer to their conjunction later that night.

November 24th 2100 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

The Moon moved closer to Jupiter than the evening before.

November 23rd 1725 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I photographed them together, as the evening before but from the doctor's surgery car park.

November 23^rd 1200 GMT Sun

 

With a clear sky and active Sun, I could be forgiven for getting outside with my Mak and DSLR, except that I was still getting over a heavy cold and neither my manager nor my wife would have been impressed. Yet, if I am well enough to put a coat on and take the rubbish out, I am well enough to do a binocular scan, right? I’m glad I did. I had seen more sunspots through my binoculars before but I couldn’t remember when. I saw and drew eight but a look at the professional observatories suggested that there were about 30 that I could have caught with my Mak and DSLR.

 

Still, 8 was much better than zero.

November 22nd 2000 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I really should not have gone to the back door with a cold but our canines needed potty. I snapped the Moon and Jupiter with my phone camera.

November 22^nd 1220 GMT Sun

 

Some sunlight broke briefly through thick and thin layers of moving cloud. I had seen some new sunspot activity on the Learmonth professional observatory images but the cloud was too thick for any of it to be visible through my binoculars and filters. So the double frustrations of a cold and bad weather continued to blight my life, at least from an astronomical point of view.

November 22^nd 1220 GMT Sun

 

Some sunlight broke briefly through thick and thin layers of moving cloud. I had seen some new sunspot activity on the Learmonth professional observatory images but the cloud was too thick for any of it to be visible through my binoculars and filters. So the double frustrations of a cold and bad weather continued to blight my life, at least from an astronomical point of view.

November 15^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

There were intermittent breaks in the cloud and they parted to reveal two small sunspots near the limit of resolution in my binoculars.

November 15th 0610 GMT Venus 

 

More in hope than expectancy, I snapped Venus in the dawn sky, hoping to detect its phase, which becomes more difficult as it approaches full. The image showed that the phase was gibbous and not full but I did not properly "nail" the shot.

November 11th 0920 GMT Sun 

 

It was a bright and sunny morning, so I had to do what I had to do. I snapped the Sun through my Mak and DSLR at my usual settings.

November 10th 2015 GMT Meteor Hunt 

 

I aimed my camera in the direction of Taurus and waited and hoped!

Alas, it was in vain, as I did not catch any meteors or anything else.

November 10^th 1215 GMT Sun

 

I saw what appeared to be two sunspots through my binoculars and filters. A look at the GONG professional observatories site showed that the oval sunspot was two that I could not separate in my binoculars.

November 9^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

After the excitement of the lunar occultation of Venus, I saw a single sunspot through my binoculars and filters before the predicted showers.

November 9th Various Times Occultation of Venus by the Moon

I followed the occultation of Venus by the Moon. I had a great view through my camera viewfinder but I overexposed all images, except the first, taken at 0718 GMT,                  

November 7th Meteor Hunt 

It was supposed to be the peak of the Taurid meteors, which have recently been discovered to be two showers. They have two streams, northern and southern.

It started off clear, so I set my camera to take photos automatically at my usual settings. However, I cut the session short when it started to rain.

I did not catch any meteors, nor anything else of interest.

November 7th 0615 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

The Moon was even closer to Venus than the day before. I snapped them together using the same settings as the day before.

 

 

I snapped both objects separately through my telescope at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

I combined all 3 photos to get the final result.

November 6th 0610 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

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I then snapped each of them at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. The Moon photo showed well but, with Venus showing only a small image, I did not get focus.

The final step was to combine the two photos to get a composite shot.

November 5th 0935 GMT Sun 

 

It was amazing to think that it was well into autumn, yet still warm enough to wear shorts outside, even though I had coat on top of my T-shirt. I had a busy day on, so just time for a full disc solar session.

 

I used my Mak. DSLR and filter at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. I could see sunspots through my camera viewfinder, so felt optimistic about a result.

November 3rd 2120 GMT Meteor Hunt 

 

I set my camera on my usual settings to take continuous photos. I aimed at Taurus in the hope of capturing activity from some minor showers in the area.

At 2105 GMT, I caught something that I could not explain.

Well, unless you count clouds, satellite and aircraft trails, that was that and no meteors!

November 3^rd 1300 GMT Sun

 

As for the two days before, some solar photons made it through the cloud and reached my binoculars and filters. There was a new large sunspot and one of the other two had faded below binocular visibility.

November 1^st 1220 GMT Sun

 

The pale midday sunlight reached my binoculars and filters. The sunspots from the day before had apparently grown slightly larger, with the leftmost one fading in intensity.