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

I caught a beautiful crescent moon rising this morning. Skies were clear (as they’ve been for a number of days recently) and I had to get up early. I quickly checked out the planets Venus & Mercury and then aimed the scope towards the moon. The moon had not yet risen yet, so I went a got a quick refresh of my coffee.

I caught the moon rising through the trees lining the ridge to the southeast. As it rose above the obstructions, I could see a wonderful example of Earthshine. Earthshine is the illumination of the dark side of the moon with light reflecting off of the Earth’s surface. It’s quite spectacular if you’ve not noticed it before.

I have two images for you today. Both were created from the same original images. Only the post processing is different. The images were (1) 1/8 second exposure at ISO100. This was intended to capture the illuminated portion of the moon. (2) was an 8 second exposure also at ISO100. This was intended to pull out a bunch of detail in the Earthshine portion of the moon.

The first, posted to the left was created using RegiStax to combine the two images. It seems to show more detail in the Earthshine portion of the moon. The second, is a little darker, but shows more detail in the illuminated portion of the moon. Which do you think is better? I was hoping to more effectively combine the best elements of the two, but was left with a couple of compromise shots because of my limited skills in image processing. This WILL be remedied as I proceed in this endeavor.

We headed down to Goblin Valley for the weekend. This seemed like an ideal time to go… weather was forecast to be nice (and it mostly was)… and we were to be under a full hunter’s moon. Hunter’s Moon is the name given to the October full moon by native Americans. As it turned out, we never did get into Goblin Valley for a moon light hike. Skies were cloudy the only night that would have worked for us. We had to make do with sunny, day light hikes. This is, by no means a sad situation, as Goblin Valley State Park is amazing under almost any conditions imaginable. Anyway….

I caught the moon rising as I headed south on Highway 6, just north of Green River, UT. I pulled over, broke out the tripod and snapped a few shots through the Rebel XTi. The moon is a bit overexposed. I should try to clean this up with Photoshop or Gimp. I was setup right on the side of the highway, so I had to be concerned about the cars and trucks speeding by at 80mph. Anyway, it still manages to convey the beauty of the scene, with the orange moon rising above the red rock cliffs.