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.