January 2025

January 3rd 1630 GMT Moon and Venus 

After putting the shopping away, I took my telescope and DSLR camera out.

I photographed the Moon at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. I stacked 5 images in Autostakkert and finished in GIMP.

 

When I photographed Venus, I reduced the exposure to 1/500 second exposure. Despite it being theoretically better than the overexposure of the evening before, it did not work.

I disconnected my DSLR camera from my telescope and attached a zoom camera lens. I set my camera to 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure to capture the Moon and Venus. The stack did not work, so I processed a single shot.

January 3rd 1520 GMT Moon and Venus 

I did some shopping and. when I arrived at the car park, I could see the moon very clearly. I could see Venus above it, even though the sun was above the horizon.

January 3rd 1130 GMT Sun 

I had some clear sky again, so photographed the Sun with my Mak telescope and DSLR camera at my usual settings of 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

January 3rd 0225 GMT Mars in Gemini 

 I took a few shots of Mars in Gemini with my phone camera at default settings. The images were out of focus, for some reason.

January 2nd 1835 GMT Saturn and Venus 

I used my phone camera at default settings to capture Venus with Saturn. Unfortunately, this did not work.

January 2nd 1640 GMT Moon and Venus 

 The sky was still clear at dusk. Venus and the moon were close. I took some Moon shots with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length. ISO 100 and 1/125 second exposure.

 

I used the same settings for Venus, perhaps unwisely.

 

I switched to my DSLR camera alone and snapped the two objects together at 45mm focal length, ISO 400 and 1/40 second exposure.

 

I tried Jupiter at 45mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/40 second exposure, in the hope of catching something. I( didn't capture any moons (as hoped) but did catch a hint of the cloud belts. This did not load in Blogger.

January 2^nd 1020 GMT Sun

 

I awoke to bright sunlight and got into action immediately. The Sun was showing lots of small sunspots and I photographed it with my 127mm Maksutov telescope and DSLR camera. The settings were 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

January 1st 2250 GMT Sirius, Orion and Jupiter 

I took a few shots of Sirius and Jupiter each side of Orion with my phone camera at default settings. 

January 1st 2050 GMT Jupiter and Mars 

 

I was putting a bag of rubbish out when I noticed that there was some clear sky from Betelguese upwards. I snapped 20 frames of Mars and Jupiter and a few more dark frames.