July 2023

July 30th Meteor Reprocess

A planned moon shoot the evening before did not happen and it rained all day. I processed a meteor shot from May 5th 2018. I produced a full frame shot and a close-up.

           

July 29th 1200 GMT Sun

There were some breaks in the cloud, so I had a look at the Sun with my binoculars and filters. The Sun was a lot quieter, showing just two sunspots, both small.

July 27th Perseid Meteor Reprocess

I reprocessed a shot of a Perseid meteor from August 2017 and produced a full frame and a close-up.

July 27^th 1215 GMT Sun

 

There was some thin cloud around but the Sun showed two large sunspots to my binoculars and filters. It doesn’t sound much but felt great after a few days of persistent rain.

July 22nd Venus with Pollux and Mars reprocess 

 

I revisited a shot of  Venus with Pollux and Mars from May 10th, taken with my phone camera and cleaned it up using GraXpert and GIMP.

July 21st 2120 GMT meteor hunt

 

Despite a clear visual view of the Moon there was a lot of haze around. I set my DSLR at 16mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 6 seconds exposure. I aimed eastwards in the area of Perseus and hoped and hoped!

At 2157 GMT I caught something that I could not explain. Probably not little green men but I would like to know what it was.

At 2209 GMT another appeared.

July 21st 2940 GMT Moon 

 

The Moon was low in the west on a hazy sky. I had to walk a few metres south of our front door to see it. It was about four days past new and I took my binoculars out. Mare Crisium was clear of the lunar terminator. Several craters were not just visible but prominent. One was towards the lower right, straddling the boundary between light and dark. I was unable to find its name from the map, though.

July 20^th 1145 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the Sun and counted no less than 11 sunspots! This was quite remarkable and showed that, whilst my Mak/DSLR combination was the best for recording sunspots that computer-based drawings could show a lot, too.

July 19^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

There was enough clear sky to see the Sun through my binoculars and filters. Naturally, it would have been better to have my Mak and DSLR at work but I don’t take them. A binocular scan was the next best thing available to me.

July 19th Moon and Venus Reprocessed

I reprocessed a shot of the Moon and Venus from April 25th to clear up the background using GraXpert and GIMP.

              

July 17th 1150 GMT Sun

There was another rare chance to take a look at the Sun through my binoculars and the sunspot count increased to 7. The original weather forecast had been bad but I decided to bring my binoculars and filters into work. I was not disappointed, at least not for the time being!

July 16th Venus and Jupiter Revisited

With cloud and rain making observations impossible, I revisited another photograph of Venus and Jupiter together on March 7th. I found that using GraXpert to clean up photos taken with a phone camera, I was able to get some half-decent results.

July 15^th 1055 GMT Sun

With a bad back and moving cloud, interspersed with rain, I was lucky to see anything at all.

Fortunately, having large (15x70) binoculars and solar filters was more than a great help, revealing no less than 6 sunspots.

July 14th Venus with Jupiter Revisited

I revisited a photo of Venus and Jupiter on February 14th 2023 that I originally took using a phone camera. I was about to use it for a book when I noticed that there was a gradient. Having experimented with GraXpert for constellation photos, I had a go with this one and ended up with quite a clear photo.

                                      

July 13^th 1140 GMT Sun

 

There was a brief period of sunshine, during which I could see s sunspot pattern. It was nice to see some activity.

July 11th Aquila Revisited

I reprocessed a more recent shot from July 3rd 2022 that covered Aquila and its surroundings. I had a gradient problem but this time I stacked 10 images using Sequator and processed the result in GIMP, There were still some rough areas around the edges but the final result showed the Milky Way, Delphinus, Sagitta and the Coathanger asterism.

      

July 10th Cassiopeia Revisited

I reprocessed a shot of Cassiopeia from July 1st 2018 to remove the gradient using GraXpert. Naturally, I did further processing using GIMP.

July 9th 1640 GMT Sun

It would have been great to have photographed the Sun with my Mak and DSLR but my back was too bad to risk carrying them. A view through my binoculars and filters showed two sunspots that I had not seen through the cloud earlier in the day. 

July 9^th 0800 GMT Sun

Enough sunlight had made it through the clouds to cast shadows. I checked it out with my binoculars and filters to reveal a single large sunspot. 

July 7th 2110 GMT Venus

 

Venus was very low in the western sky and I had to walk about a hundred yards from our house to see it. I had a bad back, so snapped it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

July 7^th 1300 GMT Sun

 

The sky was partly cloudy but I managed to get a large enough gap in the cloud to see the Sun through my binoculars and filters. I was pleasantly surprised to see that new sunspot activity had rotated onto the Sun and another sunspot had darkened enough to reach binocular visibility. This may sound insufficient to excite less astronomically experienced readers of this blog but seeing two new sunspots within 24 hours seems like a dream come true, especially when astronomers remember the last solar minimum, where no sunspots were visible for months on end!

July 6^th 1310 GMT Sun

I scanned our nearest and dearest star with my binoculars and filters to reveal three sunspots. After 3 days without any observation nor photos, it was quite welcome!

July 4th Sun Revisited

It was raining so hard that even the water was getting wet. There was only one place where a decent astronomer should be but then I never claimed to be decent. Instead of going down the pub, I reprocessed a solar image from August 27th 2022. Dare I admit to doing anything good? Well this is what happened when I ran a stack and processed the result.

July 2nd 1610 GMT Sun

After a cloudy day, the sky cleared but there was still quite a lot of moving cloud around. A binocular scan showed a single, large sunspot about to rotate off the disc.

July 2nd 2300 GMT Moon

It was the start of the witching hour, that is, if witches observe the changes to daylight savings time. The Moon was almost full and very low in the sky, barely clearing the rooftops and I had to carry my Maksutov and DSLR about 10 yards to get a shot. I suspect that it was south of the ecliptic, making it a very tough object from anywhere north of Liverpool. Usual techniques revealed a moonscape dominated by Tycho's rays.

July 1st 1305 GMT Sun

There was lots of moving cloud around, following a cloudy morning. I bin scanned the Sun with my binoculars and filters, to reveal two sunspots.

Soon after I finally got round to fixing, or trying to fix, my 9x50 finderscope. I had some help from my friendly neighbour, Frank Spencer.