You never quite know when skies are going to cooperate on any given evening. Tonight, the stars (err… solar system objects) were in alignment. Checkout these shots of this evenings conjunction involving The Moon and The Planet Mercury. I’d actually forgotten about this alignment, and had to go home to get my camera and tripod. Around 8:30pm or so, I saw the crescent moon coming into view. I knew that Mercury couldn’t be far behind, but where would it appear. A quick peak at a sky map provided by Dr. Tony over at Spaceweather.com was all I needed. Back down the road (to my less obstructed western horizon) and 15 minutes later there was the first rock sitting just below and to the left.

I took a few shots with each lens to make sure that I’d have a good enough exposure to work with. I figured the wider field of view of the first shot made for a more neighborly feel. These are our nearest celestial neighbors, after all. The narrower field of view (I’d hoped) would show a bit more Earthshine. Alas, I needed a better view to the west to allow skies to further darken to capture this more distinctly. Oh, well….

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: Conjunction: The Moon & Planet Mercury

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Image #1 - wide view 1/8sec @ f5.6 ISO400 70mm focal length
* Image #2 - narrow view 1/10sec @ f/5.6 ISO800 200mm focal length
* Adobe PhotoShop CS2 Curves & Levels
* Neat Image

Camping and astronomy are two of my favorite summer pass times. I love to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life and surround myself with the wonders of nature. The silence of a clear mornings sunrise is not something we get to experience often enough these days. Daily hiking and mountain biking allow me to stretch my legs in ways my regular schedule does not allow.

Astronomy is also high on my list of ways to spend my time. For those of you with a similar mindset, there is no better way to observe the night sky than from a remote campsite. Far from the overwhelming light pollution of major cities, remote campsites offer some of the best observing opportunities left in the industrialized world. Here, star-filled skies are the norm. The Milky Way stretches overhead from horizon to horizon. The constellations you know and love are lost in the infinite number of stars that seem to fill the sky. As we’re just now coming into the warmer months, I’d urge you to make plans to get yourself out under the darkest skies you can find. Be sure to plan your trip so that the moon is in a smaller and/or later rising phase. I prefer last quarter through just past new. The last quarter moon is 1/2 illuminated (and shrinking nightly) and it doesn’t rise until after midnight. This leaves all the hours from sunset until moonrise as the darkest hours of the night. As I’m typically pretty wiped after a long week of work, these are about the only hours I can be guaranteed to be awake for anyway

Pictured here, you can see the ObDob…. a 25″ Obsession Dobsonian Telescope. This beast loves to get to places like this where it can really perform. This shot was taken a couple of weekends ago at our campsite on Gooseberry Mesa in extreme southern Utah. This is a regular spring/fall location of ours, as temperatures are ideal for all kinds of outdoor events (including deep sky observing). Skies are also quite good (minus the light pollution spewing out of nearby St. George (25 miles away). With your back to the offending portion of the sky, the view of the Milky Way is a wonderous site.

Winter still refuses to relinquish its grip on the Park City area. 6-8″ of snow fell again yesterday (4/24/08). Skies did clear for the approaching weekend, though and the forecast is calling for mostly clear skies for the next few days at least. I woke a bit earlier than hoped for… (5ish)… and decided to take advantage of some nice early morning views. I managed to checkout the giant planet, Jupiter… which was sitting high in the southeast. I snapped a couple of prime focus pics, but I didn’t get these focused sharp enough to be worth anything. The moon was sitting due south when I came out… and slightly to the west as I focused the camera on it. For all my complaining about how bright the moon can be, it is one sweet astro-photography target. Focusing on the moon is a non-issue as you can so clearly see the details in your camera’s view finder.

Details on the lunar surface are clear and crisp. The lunar terminator can be seen running along the edge of Mare Serenitatis, lighting up the far edge of Crater Posidonius. Visibility along the terminator is especially detailed because of the stark contrast.

Here’s a shot I snagged a while back of a waxing crescent moon. This was taken on a rare clear night this past February. I’m hoping the (eventual) arrival of spring here in Park City will allow me to get outside and start taking astro images again. Only time will tell…

I’ll start my first post in quite some time with this sweet shot of Sunday evenings crescent moon. This was a tiny sliver of a moon, just shy of 24 hours old. It was only because of the incredibly flat horizons to the west that I was able to snag this shot. This was taken from our campsite down at Gooseberry Mesa in extreme southern Utah. Note the existence of Earthshine in the image. Earthshine is sunlight that reflects off of the Earth and illuminates the non-sunlit portions of the moon. This is why you can actually see the moon in its entirety in this image

I need to tell you just how amazing the skies were here. Except for some sky glow along the western horizon (light pollution comes from nearby St. George, Ut and more distant Las Vegas, NV), the skies were nearly pristine. In the wee hours, the Milky Way spanned from southern horizon to the northern horizon. It was an almost spiritual sight. It was also nice to see some of my old friends… the summer constellations of Hercules, Cygnus, Lyra, Sagittarius, etc.

I got several nice hours of dark sky time after the moon had set. I hit a bunch of old favorites. The Orion Nebula was sitting low in the western sky as it got dark. The galactic pair of M81 & M82 were almost directly over head. This made for some incredible views through the big scope. With its long focal length, I could just barely squeeze the two galaxies into the field of view simultaneously. Cranking up the power forced me to look at one or the other in much more detail (not exactly a bad thing).

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -12
* Size: roughly 1/2*
* Phase: 23.9 hours past new

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 0.3s at ISO800
* PhotoShop CS2 Curves & Levels (mac version)

Todays clear skies brought the opportunity to do a little solar observing. Given how cold its been at night, this is a nice addition to the hobby.

I’ve almost got the focusing down for imaging. Views come quickly into focus, but through the view finder of my Sony camera, its still a bit of a struggle. This shot was the best I’d could muster in the alloted time. I’m hoping to work through the details a bit more rigorously in the coming weeks.

Anyway, here’s a trio grouped tightly together. Just to put things in perspective, each of these solar prominences are larger than our entire planet. These are some truly massive events. If you just think about the amount of matter and energy involved, it really helps to put things in perspective.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Sun
* Magnitude: roughly mag -27 * Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Sony DSC-F717 Digital Camera
* 1/50s at ISO200
*PhotoShop CS2 Curves (mac version)
* Coronado Solar Max 40 Solar Telescope

Shortly after sunset on Wednesday, February the 20th, skywatchers across the Americas will be treated to a sweet total lunar eclipse. This will be the last total lunar eclipse until 2010 (so start praying for clear skies). Depending on where you live, you’ll get see all or at least most of the event. Those located to the east will see the Snow Moon rise as the Sun is setting. Shortly after that, the partial phase of the eclipse will begin. For those located in the mid-west and west, the moon will rise with the partial phase already underway. Regardless,  most everyone in the view area should be able to see all of the totality phase.

Look for the moon to turn a coppery or reddish color during totality. This is caused because the eclipse will block all direct light, but not all light. Some light will filter through Earth’s atmosphere and still shine upon the Moon. This will give it a beautiful reddish color. No special equipment is required to view a lunar eclipse. Simply head outside during the event and you will be able to enjoy it. That simple. If you have a telescope or binoculars, you might as well plan on pulling it out for the event. Wide angle views of the eclipse should be simply spectacular. Those of you looking to image the event should plan on mounting your camera on your tracking telescope or tripod. You’ll need to take exposures of as much as 2 seconds…far more than you’ll be able to hand hold. A good idea is to bracket your exposures…. ie… take a 1/2 second image… a 1 second image… and perhaps a 2 second image. Compare these to see which works best for your local conditions. Those of you still using film… might start around 1/4 second… and simply take a number of exposures for each shot you’re looking to catch. This will dramatically improve your chances of getting some nice shots.

I’m hoping to put together a post that’ll focus on imaging in more detail. Check back between now and the 20th to see it. I’ll also have a review of the event (if its visible from here).  Checkout Science@NASA for more details.  Here’s a shot I took of the last total lunar eclipse… taken this past August.

As luck would have it, skies cleared here in Park City and I got word (via Spaceweather.com) that there was a nice prominence visible on the Sun. I figured I’d take a few minutes out of a busy morning to see what all the fuss was about. Wow! What a sweet view. Not one, but two prominences jumped right out at me. Sweet! I enjoyed the view for a while and then decided that this was simply too nice not to be imaged.

This was my first success at imaging through the new scope, a Coronado Solar Max 40 solar telescope.  I’d had a couple of failed attempts previously. It seems that I need a bit more back focus than I was getting. I kept fiddling with this until I got to focus. I had to have the eyepiece pulled half way out of the diagonal before the image got sharp. I’ll pull together some sort of tube extender for my next effort. Anyway, I was quite happy to see that this actually came out close to what I was able to observe. I say close, because there was a bunch of detail on the surface of the Sun that did not appear in my image. As my target was the prominence, this wasn’t too big of a deal, but… going forward, I’ll need to get this resolved as well.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Sun
* Magnitude: roughly mag -27 * Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Sony DSC-F717 Digital Camera
* 1/50s at ISO200
*PhotoShop CS2 Levels (mac version)
* Coronado Solar Max 40 Solar Telescope

Skies were clear again this evening, offering a magnificent view of the moonrise across the valley. Temperatures, accordingly, were dropping rapidly already into the low teens by 7:30pm. Plus or minus single digits were likely to result.

Anyway, here’s a waning gibbous moon silhouetted against a nearby home. Had I prepared for this shot (notice a recent trend?), I’d have gotten setup outside a bit early…. with a tripod… and thought about the required ISO setting. This shot at ISO100 was not quick enough to pull in any foreground details. The scene moved by so quickly, that I had little or no time to make adjustments. This shot was 1/500 second f/5.6 @ISO100. A better setup might have been set to ISO800-1600… and perhaps about a 1/125 second exposure. This would have allowed for all kinds of details in the foreground. Once this detail was acquired, I’d have had considerably more options available during image processing to seek some sort of balance.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -12
* Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 1/500s at ISO100
* Gimp Curves

I found myself without a tripod for this shot taken alongside the road (hence the reduced image size). There was a bit of motion in the exposure, but I still managed to capture the Moon Pillar. This was a really beautiful scene… and makes me want to never be without all kinds of equipment. Oh, well…

Moon pillars are most apparent just after moonrise or just before moonset as the moon is sitting just above the horizon. Moon pillars are caused by moon light reflecting off tiny particles of ice in the atmosphere.