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.

Here’s a closeup of January’s Full Moon, aka The Full Wolf Moon. Skies were clear and cold last night. Fortunately, there was no wind and the atmosphere was bone dry. Temperatures were approaching the single digit range, but with all the layering I’d done, I was surprised at how comfortable I was. I even had my mittens off for an extended period of time.

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
* Astro Physics Starfire Refractor 160mm f/7.5
* PhotoShop CS2 Curves & Levels (mac version)

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A beautiful full wolf moon rose above the hills to the east of my home this evening. After countless weeks of cloudy, snowy skies, it was a joy to see anything in the night sky. I actually noticed the moon a while earlier (while east of the hills seen in the foreground. With a much lower eastern horizon, I knew I was going to have a nice shot on my hands when I got back home. NOTE: clear skies typically usher in arctic temperatures in this area. Temperatures were already down into the mid-teens by the time I took this shot. Single digits or even negative numbers are not out of the question as the night progresses.

The Full Wolf Moon is the name given by Native Americans to the January full moon. With deep snow blanketing their hunting grounds, I’m sure that the wolves howled a bit more intensely as the January moon rose. This moon was also referred to as the Full Snow Moon. This is a term that is quite fitting for this area, as there is easily 30″ of snow on the ground… with accumulations to climb (perhaps significantly) before they begin to drop in earnest.

Astro Photo Details:

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

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* First 1/160s at ISO100 ~ 80mm
* PhotoShop CS2 Curves & Levels (mac version)

The impending snow storm has been delayed :-\  That was my realization when I got up this morning. Apparently, by quite a bit. Skies were crystal clear. As I looked out my front window, I noticed that the Moon and the planet Venus were sitting awfully close together (7* I read on Spaceweather.com). Sitting just above the duo was a bright star. Not fully caffeinated yet, I had to fire up Starry Night Pro to see that this was the bright star Spica in the constellation Virgo. Sweet. Groupings like this are called conjunctions and have held major significance throughout recorded history. That being the case, I figured I might as well put the camera on the tripod and see what I could come up with.

I ended up snagging a pair of images. The first shot shows the trio through the Canon Digital Rebel using a 75-30mm zoom lens. This nicely framed the scene. It also revealed a bit of detail on the lunar surface.

The second shot was with the 28-80mm lens pulled all the way back. This allowed me to get the mountains in the foreground. I exposed this shot for a full 10 seconds so that I got a nicely silhouetted mountain.

Astro Photo Details:

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

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* First 1/2s at ISO1600
* Second 10s at ISO1600
* Gimp Curves

I was out the other night snagging a few more images of Comet Holmes when I decided to spin around to the west and capture this image of the waning crescent moon. It was actually rotated about 90° counter clockwise from how its displayed here. It kind of looked like a smile. For site formatting reasons, I decided to swing it around in a taller orientation.

Anyway, there was a bunch of detail along the lunar terminator, the line where light meets dark on the moon’s surface. I need to learn the the names of these better. At best, I can name only a small handful. The Apennine Mountains are one of my favorites as they can be seen with the naked eye and also hold a significant number of little nooks and crannys. Ideal for nights of exceptionally good seeing. Anyway, skies were relatively steady, perhaps 7 out of 10 (though the moon was well to the west)

Astro Photo Details:

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

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 1 x 1/15s exposure at ISO100
* Gimp Levels and an Unsharp Mask

I caught a sweet shot of The Moon and the red planet, Mars last night just before the clouds rolled in. The pair were separated by around 1* or so. This pairing is often referred to as a conjunction or alignment.

This was a more interesting image to process as the two are so far apart in brightness. The image I chose was a bright one (so that Mars would be visible). As such, the moon was a way washed out. To better deal with this, I created a duplicate layer in GIMP. This allowed me to process the two separately and then re-combine them later. For the moon, I used a number of Curves to dramatically reduce the overall brightness.  This revealed details on the lunar surface. For Mars, I used the Curves function to dramatically brighten the image. Not sure if this is cheating, but I took a copy of a black section and covered over the moon on this one. Otherwise, it was going to get brighter still. Finally, I selected just Mars and did an additional Curves and Levels function on just this object. This made Mars stand out significantly. Finally, I merged the two layers to create one nicely integrated image.

Astro Photo Details:

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

* Designation: Planet Mars
* Magnitude: mag -1.22
* Size: 15″

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 1 x 1/2s exposure at ISO400
* Gimp Curves

Another spectacular moonrise this evening. The November Full Moon is referred to as the Beaver’s Full Moon. Here, we see the moon rising above the ’scrub oak’ on a ridge east of Park City, Utah.  This shot was taken using the Canon Rebel XTi for a 1/30 second exposure at ISO400 shooting at prime focus through the Astro Physics Starfire Refractor. I picked this image because it had the best foreground display. I processed it in GIMP and did a Curves function on it. I pushed the low end up and the midrange down. This brought out the foreground (earthly objects) and dimmed the moon. The moon was previously a bit washed out. Pulling the midrange down a bit brought the moon under control and revealed a bunch of surface detail.

What a gorgeous moonrise today. I thought of hiking up to get a better vantage point to capture tonights moonrise. A host of conflicts would prevent that. As it turned out, it really didn’t matter. Moonrise was followed by a spectacular positioning of the (almost) full moon and the Belt of Venus. The Belt of Venus is the point in the accompanying photo where the sky changes color from blue to purple. This is Earth’s shadow being cast onto the upper atmosphere. In this photo, the Moon is sitting just above the belt.

I took this picture almost as an after thought. I’d gone out to image Comet Holmes as it cruised by Mirfak (α Per). While doing so, I decided to image the moon to see if the two really were the same size (the actually are). I pulled the Canon Rebel off of the scope and popped in the 31mm Nagler eyepiece with a variable polarizer to reduce the brightness somewhat. Skies were actually much steadier than I’d expected, revealing some amazing details. I decided to make use of the TeleVue 2x Barlow to capture some of the added details.

I chose this view centered on the Lunar Apennine Mountains because this is one of the most dramatic features on the lunar surface. There were also a couple of distinctive craters running right along the lunar terminator that were brought into stark contrast. The lunar terminator is the line where light meets dark on the lunar surface. It is along this line that many oft missed details are revealed to lunar observers..

This shot was the best of a number taken that night. I took a handful of quick but under exposed images thinking that I might stack them. Unfortunately, minor variations caused by seeing existed that made this seem problematic. I decided that the entire process would be much easier if I took the best single image and started working from there. The accompanying image was just what I was looking for. It was a 1/30 second exposure at ISO100. It was fairly well illuminated and required just a little boost at the low end of the spectrum using the Curves feature in GIMP. GIMP is a free image processing software package that runs on a number of operating systems. I’ve used it in the past when my laptop was running Windows. Unfortunately, the laptop came with Vista, the most horrible version of Windows ever released. I suffered for about 6 months before finally deciding to load Ubuntu Linux on the machine. Its been just a short while since doing so, but performance and stability are dramatically improved.. but I digress Anyway, GIMP also runs quite well on my Linux box, allowing me to do whatever processing I need on my images.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -8
* Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor f/10
* 1 x 1/30s exposure at ISO100
* Gimp Curves

Comet 17P/Holmes burst onto the astronomy scene just three weeks ago. In that time, its captured the attention of astronomers worldwide. Brightening one million fold literally overnight, the comet has grown steadily as well. From its earliest days, Comet Holmes has proved to be far more interesting than almost anyone would have imagined.

Here are a couple of interesting pictures taken last night. Both of these were taken using my Canon Rebel XTi. The first was what I went out to capture, Comet 17P/Holmes passing by the bright star Mirfak (α Per). As you can see, the star appears within the growing expanse of the comet. Set against a background of stars in the constellation Perseus, the comet continues on its merry way.

While I was out, I figured I might as well snag a shot of the waxing gibbous moon. Since it was dominating the night sky, I figured I might as well catch a couple of shots. Views of the moon were particularly crisp last night as well. I’d heard people compare the growing size of Comet Holmes to the moon, so I figured I’d compare images. Low and behold, the comet was at least as big, if not bigger than the moon!

I processed both images separately in Gimp (linux version now and then created a new image that was exactly twice the size of the originals. I then did a select all and copy and paste for each. As you can see, the two are almost an identical size. I actually have a slightly over processed version of the comet that shows it to be a bit larger than even this image indicates. I had a problem with that image and time prevented me from re-processing and using that image.

Anyway, if you’ve not gotten out to view the comet yet, now is as good a time as any, perhaps better. As the comet is almost sitting on top of Mirfak, the brightest star in the constellation Perseus, it is even easier to find than usual. Simply head outside after dark and look to the northeast. Perseus is due east of the ‘W’ shaped constellation Cassiopia. Many people are familiar with its signature shape. Due east of Perseus is the constellation Auriga lit up by bright Capella. Once you’ve identified Perseus, Mirfak is the brightest star in the constellation (along the northern ‘edge’ of stars). You likely won’t see Comet Holmes at this point as the brightness of Mirfak tends to obscure it. As the two separate in the coming days, the comet should reappear. This is a beautiful binocular or telescope object. If you have access to optics of any size, be sure to point these towards the scene. At roughly the size of the moon, this is one large object to digest. In larger telescopes, Comet Holmes will fill your eyepieces from edge to edge. This is a sweet sight. I don’t know how long the show will last, but the constellation Perseus will be visible at night through the winter. Be sure to take as many views of the comet as you can. It will undoubtedly be changing considerably over the coming weeks and months.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: Comet 17P/Holmes
* Constellation: Perseus
* Magnitude: 2.5
* Size: 15′ (roughly 1/2 the diameter of the full moon!)

* Designation: The Moon
* Constellation: Perseus
* Magnitude: roughly mag -8
* Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 1 x 60s exposure at ISO1600 (comet)
* 1 x 1/15s exposure at ISO100 (moon)
* Gimp Levels and Curves