October 2023

October 31^st 1205 GMT Sun

 

Conditions were quite poor, with a lot of moving cloud but I was able to see two sunspots close together through my binoculars and filters.

October 30th 2130 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

The Moon and Jupiter were still quite close in the sky and I photographed them with my phone camera.

October 30th 0930 GMT Sun

I snapped the Sun with my Mak and DSLR at my usual settings. Although I captured some sunspots, stacking could not remove the cloud from the image.

October 29th 2130 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I took a widefield shot of both objects at 70mm focal length,  ISO 800 and 1/50 second exposure.

 

I snapped the Moon at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1600 second exposure.

 

I ended with some Jupiter shots at 1.54m focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/3 second to try to catch some moons.

I then used my WiFi Electronic Eyepiece to take some lunar closeups.

I took some Jupiter shots but the planet appeared too bright, although I caught two moons.

I then did some DSLR shots at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure.

I combined the Jupiter shot with one of its moons.

I combined this with the full disc lunar shot and a shot of the Moon with Jupiter.

October 26th 2030 GMT Moon 

 

The Moon was nearly full and cloud was scattering its light everywhere. I snapped it with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

October 24^th 1130 GMT Sun

 

It was supposed to be getting close to a solar maximum but a binocular scan of the Sun, with my filters, suggested otherwise, with just a single, small sunspot to report.

October 23rd 0610 GMT Venus 

I snapped Venus with my DSLR at 300mm focal length and 1/200 second exposure. The disc was getting smaller to the point where only one photo was clear enough to see the phase.    

October 22nd 1100 GMT Sun

As the sky cleared, I took another set of photos, stacked and processed them. Bingo!

October 22nd 0940 GMT Sun

 

There was some thin cloud around but I had a go at photographing the Sun with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

The stack did not work and the individual photos were too cloudy to be of use. Fortunately, the sky cleared later.

October 15th 0925 GMT Sun 

 

It was a nice, bright autumn morning, ideal conditions for photographing the Sun. I used my Mak, DSLR and filters at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

October 14th 2100 GMT Planets and Double Star

 

In contrast to the previous evening, I went for planets. I attempted to capture Jupiter's and Saturn's moons at 1.54m focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/3 second exposure.

 

 

I then lowered the ISO setting to 100 and exposure to 1/25 second to try to capture planetary detail.

I then combined images to show the planets and their moons.

 

 I was quite pleased with how Jupiter's moons came out. I caught the main cloud belts but nothing else on the planet. I had previously had better results with webcams.

I then went for the double star Gamma Arietis.

October 13th 2250 GMT Widefield Session

 

The sky was clear after a day of heavy rain. I started off trying to catch Jupiter's moons with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 2 seconds exposure.

 

I repeated this for the Pleiades. I adjusted the focus.

 

I followed up with some more photos of Jupiter's moons. An attempted stack in Sequator obscured one of the moons but a single frame photo "nailed" the shot.

I changed the focal length to 70mm focal length and 8 seconds exposure.

 

I did some more Pleiades shots.

 

Next was the Hyades.

 

I had never caught the Crab Nebula on camera before but I had a go anyway. I was not able to identify everything in the photo, so I needed to check my atlas. I saw 3 extended objects and a few apparent star clusters. My atlas suggested that the object near the top left was probably it.

 

I finished with M37, perhaps a more realistic target. I think I might have lost the cluster in the stellar background. No, it turns out that I was aiming too far north! Nevertheless, it was an interesting star field.

 

I took some dark frames at 8 seconds followed by some at 2 seconds.

I cleaned up the backgrounds of the Hyades, Crab Nebula and both close-up and widefield Pleaides shots and adjusted exposure and darkness settings in GIMP.

October 10th 0545 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

I snapped the Moon and Venus together with my DSLR at 70mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/50 second. I combined 5 images using Sequator and finished in GIMP.

 

I snapped each at 300mm focal length.

October 9th 1925 GMT  Meteor Hunt

It was the last day of the Draconid shower. I set my camera to take photos using my usual settings and hoped.

At 1938 GMT I caught a bright meteor with a short trail near Vega. Due to the direction of travel, it was a non-shower meteor.

At 1947 GMT, I caught a meteor travelling in the right direction to be a true Draconid.

At 2026 GMT I caught a faint sporadic meteor with a short trail.

At 2036 GMT, I caught a faint Draconid meteor.

The final action of the evening was a shot of Jupiter's moons.

October 9^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the Sun in hazy conditions. I saw two sunspots close to rotating off the solar disc.

October 9th 0410 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

I was awake early. I snapped the Moon and Venus separately using my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length. ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

 

I then snapped them together with my DSLR at 35mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/40 second exposure. Unfortunately, I did not get a decent image.

October 8th 0930 GMT Sun 

 

Despite the favourable weather forecast for the period and warm temperatures, there was lots of haze around. Nighttime conditions made viewing and photography impossible and the day was little better. I used the same telescope and camera settings as then morning before to capture the Sun.

October 7th 1110 GMT Sun 

 I took some full disc solar images using the same settings as the day before.

October 6th 0940 GMT Sun and Moon

 There was a lot of haze around but I was on leave at home and I just had to see and photograph the Sun, even though it was quiet.

 I set up my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500th second exposure as usual. I took several shots, with the intention of stacking them.

 

I removed my solar filters and tried the Moon but thought the haze had beaten me. Yes, I was right. I did not get a decent image.

 

I took some backup photos of the Moon with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 400 and 1/500 second exposure. It was not a classic, iconic photo but I captured some details.

October 6th Venus Revisited Again

I stacked and processed 5 Venus images from May 7th.

October 5th Venus Revisited

I reprocessed an image of Venus from June 24th, this time stacking 5 images.

October 3rd 2150 GMT Moon and Jupiter

 

Conditions were very bad and only the Moon, Jupiter and Vega were visible. Even the Moon was mostly obscured by cloud. I tried several combinations of exposure times, ISO settings and focal lengths. 18mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/10 second exposure worked best.

October 3^rd 1105 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the Sun under moving cloud conditions and saw two sunspots near the edge of visibility in my binoculars.

October 3^rd 0400 GMT Venus

 

I was woken by our dogs, so while they were out doing what dogs do, I saw Venus. I snapped it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/400^th second exposure. Alas! All 16 images were out of focus.

September 2023

September 25^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

The clear conditions of the early morning did not persist. There was some thin cloud around at lunchtime but it did not stop me from seeing some sunspots.

September 25^th 0510 GMT Venus

 

I woke up to  a clear sky. Venus shone bright and I snapped it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/400 second exposure. I also did the same with Jupiter, just in case.

 

Betelguese shone brightly and looked brighter than Rigel and Procyon. It was fainter than Capella, though. I estimates its magnitude to be 0.2.

September 21^st 0655 GMT Sun

 

The Sun had risen and showed two sunspots close together.

September 21^st 0545 GMT Venus

 

It was just a few minutes to sunrise but Venus was unmistakeable in the late dawn sky. Having botched a previous attempt, I tried again with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/400 second. I just managed one passable image but, with that as enough.

September 20th M33 Revisited

I found some images of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33) in Triangulum from September 19th 2022. I restacked and reprocessed them. 

September 20th M34 and NGC752 Revisited

The subject of NGC752 came up in a photo of Triangulum. With cloudy weather and a cold, I found an old photo of it with M34. I did not have the original images, so I reprocessed the final image, using GraXpert and GIMP.

  

September 19th Melotte 20 Revisited

I reprocessed the Melotte 20 image from 15th, using GraXpert.

September 19th Gamma Arietis

With bad back, a cold and bad weather, I was not going to recapture the real object but I found an old image that I reprocessed in March 2019. Even in 4+ years, my processing techniques had improved and I did not know when the original image was taken and I think it predates my first digital camera. So I reprocessed it again.

September 18th 0550 GMT Venus

Dawn was just about over. The angular separation between the Sun and Venus was very noticeable. I tried a photo shoot of Venus with my DSLR but it did not work. 

September 15th 2100 GMT Photo Shoot 

 

Astronomers love those late summer evenings when the Milky Way arches from Sagittarius low in the south west to Perseus in the east. This was not one of them!

 

There was lots of thin cloud around, suggesting that deep sky photography was for extreme optimists. To that end, I set my camera at 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 2 seconds exposure.

 

First up, I tried Jupiter's moons.

 

Then I tried to capture Titan, Saturn's brightest moon. Without verifying the position of Saturn and the brightness of nearby stars, the result, as some of Jeremy Kyles lie detector tests, was inconclusive.

 

Despite my earlier misgivings, I tried Melotte 20, the very bright star cluster in Perseus. It is one of the easiest deep sky object to photograph.

 

I had a lot of trouble finding NGC 952 and was not sure I caught it. I didn't.

 

I ended up with some dark frames for stacking.

September 15th 2009 GMT Meteor 

 

I was putting some things out for recycling when I saw a bright meteor about magnitude -3 (bright but somewhat fainter than a fireball) flash downwards through Andromeda, almost straight vertically down. It had a reddish colour, as I saw it break up in the atmosphere.

September 15^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

The sky was hazy and the Sun seemed somewhat inactive. This combination is rarely an inspiring one, so just a single large sunspot to report.

September 14th 0430 GMT Binocular Scan

I was awake early again. I was hoping to catch Comet Nishimura but, as the evening before, there was a lot of cloud near the horizon. Venus was dazzlingly bright, especially through my binoculars. Its phase appeared larger than my telescope shot from the morning before.

Although the dawn was brightening, I could still see the Orion Great Nebula (M42) and most stars of the Pleiades (M45). M35 in Gemini appeared as a faint smudge. I thought about estimating the brightness of Betelguese but, with thin cloud around, any estimate would have been wildly inaccurate, at best. It seemed to be neither unusually bright nor faint.

September 13th 0440 GMT Venus

 

I was awake a bit before the alarm went off and was surprised to see a clear, although almost cloud free. sky. Venus looked very bright. I snapped it with my phone camera with the Moon. I took one with a wider field and a close-up.

 

As I had some spare time. I took my Mak and DSLR out. I used 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. I stacked the best 5 images and finished in GIMP.

 

 

I took some follow-up shots with my DSLR only as a possible backup. As it happened, the telescope shots came out fine and the DSLR only ones were not.

September 12^th 1230 GMT Sun

 The weather had been cloudy for a while. It cleared enough, for a brief period, to allow me to see three sunspots through my binoculars and filters. I guessed I had to be grateful for that little nugget of activity.

September 9th 0800 GMT Sun

 

I never thought I would be writing this from Southern England. It was very hot but I tried the WiFi Electronic eyepiece on the Sun for the first time. it was hard to settle on a particular part of the Sun, as it was hard to see the small screen.

 

I followed up with full disc shots using my Mak and DSLR at the usual settings.

Nothing worked, so wasted session!

September 9th 2330 GMT Jupiter's Moons and Gamma Arietis

 

It had been  a cloudy evening, despite a positive weather forecast. I had hoped to do a photo shoot but it never cleared enough. I snapped Jupiter's moons at 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 2 seconds exposure. At Phil Collins' bookmaker, it would have been against all odds but I captured all four.

 

I used the same set up to try to split the double star Gamma Arietis. I did, too! It is the second brightest star, right and down from centre. Its fainter companion is down and to the left. Except I didn't and what I really captured was a background star. The real Gamma Arietis is too close a double to split with a DSLR and I found an old shot of it and reprocessed it on September 19th.

September 8th 0510 GMT Venus

The sky was mostly cloudy, mostly but not totally. The Moon and Jupiter were clouded out but Venus wasn't. I used the same camera settings and got a clearer photo than on 5th.

September 7^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

After a warm June, followed by an awful July and an August nearly as bad, the first full week in September turned out to be extremely hot, especially for September, with temperatures in the 30s. I was busy at lunchtime and did not have time to do a proper shoot. I bin scanned the Sun instead and saw 3 sunspots.

September 6th 0500 GMT Moon, Jupiter and Venus 

 

I had a go with my phone camera to catch the Moon with Jupiter and Venus above the rooftops.

Unfortunately, none of the shots worked.

September 5th 0500 GMT Moon, Jupiter and Venus 

 

Following inferior conjunction, Venus had emerged into the morning sky and was low in the east. I snapped it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.

I repeated it for the Moon and Jupiter.

 

 

I then shot the Moon and Jupiter wide field at 70mm focal length.

Then came the inevitable recombination.

September 4th 0350 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I was awake in the early morning. Jupiter and the Moon were high in the south and noticeably closer than the evening before. I did some snaps with my camera phone and followed up with my DSLR at 70mm, ISO 800 and 1/30 second exposure. 

I took a photo of the Moon then overlaid it on top of the shot with Jupiter and the Moon.

September 3rd 2120 GMT Moon and Jupiter 

 

I snapped the Moon and Jupiter with my phone from an upstairs window.

September 3rd 0000 GMT Moon and Jupiter

 

Jupiter had cleared both the horizon and the houses but conditions were still hazy. I snapped the two together with my DSLR at 18mm focal length, ISO  400 and 1/50th second exposure. 

 

I took some frames of the Moon at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1000 second exposure.

 

I tried Jupiter by increasing the exposure to 1/250 second exposure. It did not work.

 

I then tried to capture the Moons by increasing the ISO to 800 and exposure to 2 seconds.

I combined all 3 images to get this composite shot.

September 2nd 2100 GMT Moon 

 

I did not get the clear sky that the weatherperson promised. A lot of thin cloud was around. The Moon was low in the east and out of range of our back garden. I carried my telescope, DSLR and WiFi electronic eyepiece to a patch of land about 30 yards from our front door.

 

I started off with my DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure and took some full frame shots.

I then switched to the electronic eyepiece and did a few close ups.

 

 

I tried to find and photograph Saturn but it was too hazy.