January 2023

January 30th 2120 GMT Comet 2022 E3 ZTF

My attempts to capture the close passage of Mars and the Moon failed dismally but I managed to catch the comet on camera with my DSLR at 70mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 10 seconds exposure.

January 27th 1925 GMT Moon and Jupiter

I had to try the same shot with my phone camera. The relative brightness of the Moon and Jupiter was good but the lunar phase looked strange.

January 27th 1855 GMT Moon and Jupiter

 

The sky was partly clear, with thin cloud scattering moonlight. I had missed the best evening for this shot but the moon and Jupiter were within camera range and I did a quick shoot before dinner.

 

I set my camera to 40mm focal length, ISO 100 and tried various exposures. I then changed lenses and used 300mm focal length and various exposure times to shoot the two objects separately.

Unusually, I managed four shots in or near focus, so I stacked them to produce a composite moon shot.

Jupiter showed a hint of cloud belts, although the disc was very small.

I then followed my mission in an attempt to capture Jupiter's moons and the Orion Nebula at 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and various exposures without a tripod! I had, after all, promised myself and my astronomical audience that I would try new things out, even if, in theory, they were not feasible! I caught a hint of a moon but Jupiter was horribly mis-shapen!

I combined the shots of Jupiter and the Moon together and separately to produce a final image.

January 24^th 1715 GMT Moon and Venus

 

I used a conventional and reliable method of conjunction/close approach shots. I photographed the Moon and Venus each at 300mm focal length, 1/200 second exposure and ISO 100. I took one of Jupiter, well, just in case!

I did not get anything useful from the Venus shot but the moon shot was OK-ish.

 

I then adjusted the focal length to 70mm and caught the Moon and Venus together. I overlaid the moon shot, after resizing to get the final result.

January 24^th 1205 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the sun in a clear sky. A sunspot group. that appeared as a single large sunspot to my binoculars, was close to the solar limb and about to rotate to the far side of the Sun.

January 22^nd 1305 GMT Sun

 The weather was cloudy but I managed to catch a single large sunspot.

January 21^st 0155 GMT Binocular Session

 

Unfortunately, cloud rolled in and left a haze behind. I saw Comet 2022 E3 ZTF and it appeared faint and diffuse, again looking more like a globular cluster or galaxy. No sign of a tail.

 

I further browsed around the sky, potting Melotte 111, Melotte 20, the Beehive (M44), M35 and Melotte 20. I also saw Epsilon and Delta Lyrae, the double stars in Lyra. Whilst I enjoyed my short session, none of the objects showed at their best. The Beehive Cluster, one of my favourites, looked best, as it was well clear of the horizon.

January 20th 1840 GMT Meteor Hunt

So after the amazing experience of seeing a comet for the first time since July 2020, it was back to the more mundane and routine activity of hunting for meteors. So, the Gamma Ursa Minorids were still active and the sparseness of the shower was demonstrated by my failure to nail a single one the evening before. Now maybe one of the many commercial rockets going into low Earth orbit could release a few marbles or pebbles to give us meteor addicts something worth seeing!

I got something but it was a UFO at 2309 GMT.

January 20^th 0600 GMT Comet 2022 E3 (ZTF)

 

The comet name sort of rolls easily off the tongue, somewhat easier than the tongue twister Hale-Bopp. I forgot how exactly many comets I had seen but this was something between my 20^th and 30^th. At the time of viewing with my 15x70 binoculars, it seemed to be a faint fuzzy patch that could easily be mistaken for a galaxy or globular star cluster, except that I knew that there were none in that part of the sky. The globular cluster M3 and the galaxy M51 were further south and east. To be honest, seeing any comet at all without the use of a large telescope is an event for amateur astronomers. However, I did not expect it to inspire the general public, as NEOWISE F3 did in 2020, nor Hale-Bopp and Hyukutake in the late 1990s. Still, I could tick the box to say I’d seen it.

 

I also had a look at the double stars Albireo, Epsilon Lyrae and Delta Lyrae, at least one of which I would hope to photograph later in the year.

 

January 19^th 1830 GMT Meteor Hunt

 

I aimed my camera at Ursa Minor again with my usual settings. I returned to the warm while hoping to get something interesting on “film”.

At 1938 GMT, I got something but it was not a meteor. Due to the faint tails to the top and bottom of the object, I had to classify it as unidentified.

At 2146 GMT, I caught another unidentified object.

A mere minute later, another unidentified object appeared.

At 2150 GMT, three minutes later, another UFO appeared. If they were little green men, why didn't they land and pose for my camera?

Despite catching some strange objects on camera, I failed to nail a single meteor.

January 19^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

I only have a short lunch break at work but the sky was clear and the Sun was active, so I did a few full disc shots with my Mak and DSLR at my standard settings. I could see quite a few sunspots through my finderscope, so things looked promising.

January 18^th 2100 GMT

 

I left a camera out to search for meteors. Then I hoped! Alas! My hope was in vain.

January 17^th  1920 GMT Meteor Search

 

I aimed a camera at Ursa Minor as the evening before. As the evening before, I did not capture any meteors.

I also checked Betelguese and thought it had brightened a bit to magnitude 0.2.

January 17^th 1205 GMT Sun

It was a very similar session to that of the 15^th. The Sun was low, even in the ,middle of the day and covered by thin, hazy cloud. Despite this, I was able to see six sunspots and did a drawing based on my binocular observations.

January 16^th 2100 GMT Meteor Hunt

 

This was a long shot but there was a minor shower, the Gamma Ursae Minorids  in progess. I reset my camera to my usual meteor hunting settings and hoped. Alas, it was not to be but I did catch one in an earlier session.

January 16^th 2100 GMT Constellations

 

I set my DSLR at 35mm focal length, ISO 800 and 15 seconds exposure. I aimed at Orion, then switched later to Gemini.

Although I did a meteor shoot later, it was at 2047 GMT that I caught a meteor on one of the constellation shots, near Orion.

January 16^th 1720 GMT Venus

 

I arrived home and aimed my phone camera at Venus. I used 10x zoom, ISO 800 and minimum exposure settings, at least what I could control. The result showed a full disc, which was quite accurate. The real proof would come later in the year when the disc would get larger and the phase smaller.

January 15^th 1110 GMT Sun

Conditions were not perfect. Had they been perfect, or near enough, I would have used my Maksutov and DSLR. The good thing is that the gaps in the cloud were better and more frequent than the day before. I was able to get a clearer and more accurate view of the Sun. Fortunately I have large binoculars and a white light filter to match. I saw six sunspots, at least one of them was probably a multiple one that would be split by a telescope.

Jan 15th 0000 GMT Constellations

 

The weather forecast was clear but it was a cloudy evening with odd showers. I saw Orion and set up my camera at 35mm focal length ISO 800 and 15 seconds exposure. Shock horror! It was cloudy when I went out! It partially cleared a few minutes later. I kept moving the camera around and attempted shots of Taurus. Auruga and Cassiopeia.

Part of the first set of shots revealed the Hyades and Pleaides star clusters, with Mars.

My single shot of Auriga was cloudy, so the result was underwhelming.

The Cassiopeia shot was composed from 5 photos. I had to include a TV aerial in order to get the Perseus Double Cluster to the top left.

January 14th Sun Reprocess

I continued with two more sets of frames from October 8th.

January 14th 1410 GMT Sun

Conditions were poor. Really poor. Or even worse than that. The lure of an active sun and a mere shaft of sunlight low in the south west drew me outside. I am as certain as day is day and night is night that had it been clear, I would have seen many more sunspots and, with it being a poor month, I was grateful for the three I saw, rather than lamenting the may more I didn't. I used my binoculars and filter to make a drawing.

January 14th Sun Reprocess

I continued processing solar close-ups. The 2nd stack was composed from 16 images. I had to create two images of sunspot groups to eliminate dust from the camera.

January 13th 1650 GMT Venus

I saw Venus hovering over some houses. I tried to capture it on my 'phone camera but did not. The main point was that I tried, as I was still at the early stages of finding out what I could do and couldn't do with a camera phone.

January 12th Sun Reprocess

I stacked 12 solar images using Autostakkert from October 8th. I finished in GIMP and it showed some faculae, as well as many sunspots.

The first stack of the close-ups did not totally work but I managed a close-up of one of the sunspots.

January 10th Sun Reprocess

I tried to stack some solar images from October 2nd 2022 with Sequator. I discovered that it simply did not stack solar shots, only constellations and deep sky. 

I tried again using Autostakkert. After some further processing in GIMP, the result was better than the original.

January 9^th 2140 GMT Betelguese

 

I observed that Betelguese had faded to magnitude 0.3, although that was still much brighter than average.

January 7th 1740 Moon with Phone Camera

I looked up how to adjust ISO and E/M (?) settings to avoid overexposing the Moon but still did. I caught the phase but that was all.

January 2^nd 2040 GMT Moon, Mars and Aldebaran

This photo taken from my camera showed the lunar phase, as well as Mars and Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus.

January 2^nd 1450 GMT Moon

 

In contrast, my second “live” action of the month was straight out of the reinvention book. The waxing gibbous moon was hanging low in the east. I took a shot with my ‘phone camera and boosted the zoom to 10x. I was as interested in overcoming my prejudice against the beastly instruments, as I had been to maximise the potential of my DSLR.

If there was a trick to this shot, I had not found it.

January 2nd 1120 GMT Sun

Strange how us humans make a big thing of celebrating another circuit of the Earth around the Sun. Yet, for us astronomers, the passage of the Earth around the Sun determines what we are able to see in the night sky. The combined motion of the Moon and planets determine which of them we can see and how well we can see them.

I had made no New Year resolutions but  I was hoping to continue my astronomical re-invention that I started in the autumn of 2022. 

The first observation of 2023 was not some dramatic, groundbreaking image but one of my regular habits that I had decided to keep. The Sun is a dynamic, constantly-changing object and my plan was to continue to observe and record it.

The bad news was that I was unable to use a telescope, as I had a bad back. The good news was that I could see four sunspots in my binoculars and filter.