Friday, February 28, 2014

Aurora in Bolton


Image of the Aurora from my back garden last night.

Last night was amazing! Following a Solar Storm a few days ago the Earth was bombarded with particles from the Sun to produce the most incredible Aurora in England for many years. Although I tried hard, I couldn't see the Aurora from my house even though photos from North Wales, Wigan and Leeds were coming in in Twitter. We have a lot of light pollution to the North which doesn't help. I set up my camera and pointed it North in my back garden, the sky was clear with lots of stars visible. I then took some images at around 20 sec exposures and hoped for the best!


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Moon and Venus


Had to get up very early today for this one, 6.30am to see the cresent Moon and Venus lying low in the South East with a clear sky and twilight. A beautiful sight.

I took this image with my Canon EOS350D and 300mm zoom lens sat on a small tripod on the window ledge.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Super Moon



Apparently, January 2014 had a 'Black Moon' followed by a 'Super Moon' ... sounds a little complicated, but certainly worth looking at.

To capture this image I decided to use my Skywatcher 130m Newtonian scope. I have not used it for a while, so I spent some time assembling it again and checking that everything was alright. Then I used the Philips Toucam Pro II webcam and SharpCap to take about 30 avi images of the almost full moon. After stacking the AVI's in Registax I then proceeded to make up the jigsaw puzzle of producing a mozaic with the images using iMerge.

It is fun to do!

Thursday, February 06, 2014

Cresent Moon


Taken with my Skywatcher 80ED Pro and Philips Toucam Pro II webcam. Moon mosaic of five images with iMerge.

This photo was taken between the rain storms of a beautiful cresent moon on 2/2/14. The UK is experiencing a battering of storms which have been constantly feeding in from the Atlantic. There has been flooding in some areas since before Christmas and no end in sight!
Needless to say that there are not many clear nights. This month has a 'Super Moon' so it should be interesting to see if the Moon is brighter or bigger this month.