Jupiter's Moons

Last night the Moon and Jupiter reached their closest points to each other. Jupiter is very bright in the Southern sky and with the Moon just above, it was a wonderful sight.

Photo shows Jupiter with four of it's Moons (left to right) Europa, Io, Ganymede, Callisto.

Blue Earth

This photo never ceases to amaze me... incredible!

So peaceful and tranquil, all alone in the blackness of space

The Earth, the Earth
Is big and bright
With the stars in skylight
Bright Earth, bright Earth
How lovely you are
I want to touch you
But you are very far

An early Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon is very early this year and coincides with beginning of Autumn (23rd September this year)

This means that the Moon will rise directly in the East at about the same time as the Sun sets directly in the West. The last time this happened was in 1991 and will not be seen again until 2029.

This photo taken just as the Moon started to wane with the Canon EOS and 200mm lens.

The Moon was a beautiful sight making it almost daylight on that clear night!

Perfectly clear sky!

The UK is currently experiencing something most unusual!

A volcano in Iceland has emitted loads of dust and gas and is sitting over our country. All flights in and out of the UK have been grounded for the last couple of days. The weather today has been gorgeous, wall to wall sunshine and I have sat in the garden and experienced for the first time ever perfectly clear blue sky.

No vapour trails and no noise from airplanes...wonderful!

Can we keep this going for another few days? I hope so!

A lovely cresent Moon tonight very near to Venus, Mercury has now vanished, managed to capture it just in time!

"Passengers face further disruption after flight restrictions were extended until 1300 BST on Sunday as the danger from Icelandic volcanic ash continues.
The National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) said forecasts showed the ash cloud progressively covering the whole of the UK after 1900 BST.
British Airways has cancelled all long and short-haul flights in and out of the UK on Sunday.
Officials warn that European airspace could be disrupted for several days. "

Venus and Mercury

Took this image on Wednesday 7th April of Venus and Mercury viewed over Starmount in Radcliffe at about 9.15pm. I stood for ages watching the sunset and as the sky darkened first Venus then Mercury came into view.
A lovely sight!
Used my Canon EOS 350D, set to ISO 800 and 500ms exposure.
Today we have had the best day for months, temperature reaching 20 degrees and wall to wall sunshine...fantastic! (we have waited so long!)

Mr Moon

Every time I see the Moon when i'm with Melissa (my Grandaughter) I show her the Moon and say "Look! It's Mr Moon!.

Tonight she said "Grandad, you always say that and he's not watching!

Well, this is a lovely image that I took that shows the beauty of Mr Moon!

Orion

A lovely wide view of Orion from my back garden.

I took my skywatcher 80ED out to try to capture Mars with the SC1.5 camera, but didn't have much success. I have not used the SC1.5 camera with this scope and I think it was having problems focusing. I need to find out a bit more before trying again.

Instead I took out my Canon 350D and tried some wide field views of Orion.

I must admit that the awful Winter has put me off going outside and setting up the equipment in the freezing cold. Now that Spring has arrived i'm inspired to get out there a bit more!

Mars and Moon

A wonderful sight tonight of Mars and the Full Moon.

Had a good look with my Skywatcher 80ED scope. Captured some images with the Canon 350D and 200mm lens mounted on a small tripod.
The image shown is Mars and the Moon from my back garden.
Back garden is almost like daylight with the Moon so bright, but very cold, didn't stay out for long.

Mars is in opposition at the moment so it is very bright.

If you look carefully at the image you can see some detail on Mars. I now need to get my Philips Toucam ProII out with the Skywatcher 130m and see if I can capture some images as good as last time Mars was this clear.

Frozen Britain

What an amazing image! Snow from above! (Click to enlarge)
We are now in the grip of the coldest Winter ever. Tonight temperature down to -10 and still falling. The toilet has just frozen up and i'm flushing salt down it to keep it clear!
Icicles like I have not seen since the 1960's hang outside my house and there is no end to the freeze! Clear nights, but too cold to get outside and image.

Eclipsed Blue Moon at New Year!

Took this image at about 7.45 tonight with my Canon 350D with 200mm zoom lens. ISO 100.

Well, this is a rare one!

Tonight on New Years Eve I saw a Partial Lunar Eclipse (about 10%) It is also a 'Blue Moon' the second full moon of the month. A wonderful sight in the clear sky tonight after all the snow and gloomy weather.

The last time there was a Lunar Eclipse and a Blue Moon together was 350 years ago ... so I wonder when this happened last on the last day of the year and decade as well!!!

Tonight the Moon is bright, almost as high as it can get in the sky. Cold and calm... a moment of reflection for the end of a year and end of a decade.

Here are some of my children from school with their beautiful poems!

http://tinyurl.com/yfa8sjp

Happy New Year!

3D Show

Amazing stuff this 3D.

Went to see 'A Christmas Carol' at the cinema with 200 kids from school on Wednesday. The film has been filmed in 3D, but the cinema didn't have 3D technology to get the full effect. Still the film was superb, would love to see it in true 3D.

Yesterday I showed my class a 3D Space Show and gave all 30 kids 3D glasses. I displayed the images on the Interactive Whiteboard as a Powerpoint Presentation. They all loved it!

Now my eyes are not brilliant, so I wasn't sure how it would look on a big screen in 3D, but it worked really well.

Above is one of the images that I used, 3D Mars!

Astro-Blog Book

It's arrived!

My Astro-Blog Book!

Having put stuff on my blog now for a long time, I thought it would be nice to have a printed version. There only seems to be one company that will turn a blog into a professional looking book. Its called 'Shared Book', produced by 'blog2print' and the quality is superb. This is the second blog that I have had printed and I am most impressed!

http://www.blog2print.com/

The Eagle has Landed!

Alright...so its made of plastic. I bought this as a 4D Puzzle from e bay. It took about an hour to assemble all the pieces and here it is. A great little model and I also built the Apollo Command Module which fits nicely with the Lunar Lander.

I'm now hoping to get an Airfix Saturn V model for Christmas. (Are you listening Father Christmas?)

First 3D Image

Get your 3D glasses on and have a look at this! (enlarge it first!)

Superb 3D image of astronaut Pete Conrad on the Moon from the Apollo 12 mission. Today I bought a copy of Sky at Night Space 3D. Some fantasic 3D images of Space. My favourite images are that of Mars... superb!

Apollo 11 landing site from the LRO!

As the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) neared the surface, Neil Armstrong could see the designated landing area would have been in a rocky area near West Crater. He had to change the flight plan and fly the LM westward to find a safe landing spot. This image is 742 meters wide (about 0.46 miles). North is towards the top of the image.

This is amazing!! The Apollo 11 Landing Site from the LRO at it's lower orbit!

I have waited sooooo long to see an image like this!

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

With those eight words, astronaut Neil Armstrong let the world know that Apollo 11 had landed safely on the moon, beginning humankind's first exploration of another world. The landing certainly kept the mission operations crew in suspense as Armstrong maneuvered around the bouldery ejecta on the northeast flank of West Crater, finally settling down almost a kilometer to the west with only tens of seconds of fuel remaining.The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team earlier released two pictures of the Apollo 11 landing site, each taken under different lighting conditions and at lower resolution than this image. This is LROC's first picture of Apollo 11 after LRO dropped into its 50 km mapping orbit. At this altitude, very small details of Tranquility Base can be discerned.

The footpads of the LM are clearly discernible. Components of the Early Apollo Science Experiments Package (EASEP) are easily seen, as well. Boulders from West Crater lying on the surface to the east stand out, and the many small craters that cover the moon are visible to the southeast.

Apollo 17 Landing Site

Latest images from the LRO, here is the Apollo 17 Landing Site!

What amazing images they are, you can even see the trails of the astronauts as they walked around on the Moon. This is a bit like Google Earth showing your back garden from space!

I wonder if we will have Google Moon with images mapped from the LRO showing all the Apollo landing sites...would be great!

The images above were taken from the mission showing the landscape and the Lunar Module Descent Stage left on the Moon taken from the Lunar Rover after lift off.
Fantastic!!

Amazing Weather!

Here is Melissa enjoying the sunshine, don't forget it's nearly November!

This time last year it was snowing! (fact)

This week has had temperatures as high as 21 degrees, yesterday we had lunch in the garden with T-shirts and beautiful sunshine! Even night temperatures are still at 15 degrees, you could sit in the garden with a beer. Looking at the weather map warm air from the South is flowing across the UK, is this a true Indian Summer?

It is quite cloudy and a lot of moisture in the air, but for a half term week its amazing!

Saturn's new ring

An incredible discovery today, been on the news and in the newspapers!

Saturn has a large diffuse 'ring' that has not been seen until now. The dusty hoop lies some 13 million km (eight million miles) from the planet, about 50 times more distant than the other rings and in a different plane.

Above is my image of Saturn taken in 2007 with my Skywatcher ST80 and Philips Toucam Pro II. About 3000 frames stacked in Registax. I wonder if one day I will be able to image the new ring with a super sensitive Infra Red camera. (I doubt it somehow!!)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8291905.stm

Tonight's Harvest Moon

A beautiful Moon tonight! Took this one from my bedroom window, no fancy equipment.

Perfectly clear and the Moon perfectly aligned high in the sky.

The Harvest Moon is the full Moon nearest to the first day of Autumn and today is the 4th October which only happens every four years.

I wonder how many farmers are out tonight gathering the crops in Moonlight?

A beautiful night!

ISS tonight

At last I have managed to capture the ISS tonight with a (bit) of detail!

I have tried different ways of capturing an image of the ISS, but all I end up with is a blur or a bright spot.

Tonight I tried my Skywatcher ED80 pro and Canon 350d. OK...not brilliant...but the best image so far!

The camera was set to ISS 800, 1/400s and hand held along with the scope. The most difficult part is focusing the scope, as the ISS passes overhead the scope needs re-focusing and it is so difficult trying to adjust focus, track the ISS and take pictures.

I will have another go tomorrow and see if I can do any better!