Crescent Moon (Day 3), Earthshine, M13 revisited, and more!

This is the third day in a row that the weather has permitted a warm summer evening to scan the heavens!
Here is "day 3" of my effort to photograph the moon every night!

When the moon is in crescent shape and you expose for a longer time you can see what is called "Earthshine" on the moon's shaded surface! You can make out the various "seas" (darker portions) of the moon.

Here is a shot of my observatory with the moon in the background (see the Earthshine?)

I revisited the Great Globular Star Cluster in Hercules last night, taking 17 - 8 second photos and stacking them together to create this image. Can you make out the different colored stars (yellow, blues)? The overall color is slightly greenish due to the insufficient number of images to be stacked. I will go for more in the future!

It was during this effort that I noticed flashes in the southern skies...an approaching dry lightning storm coming up from California. Never heard the thunder but WOW, was there a lot of lightning strikes somewhere! I stacked my "wide field" views into a single short video below. Sadly the lightning flashes didn't show up, but you can see the apparent rotation of the stars in the sky as the clouds approached!

So I decided to pull the plug on my observing session about 11:45 pm. It was good to see the Lord's handiwork again!

Whirlpool Galaxy, Circumpolar stars, Crescent Moon, and More!

Two nights in a row of clear skies! Woohoo!

Got outside just in time to capture the second crescent moon in a row:

I also took another shot of the southern skies in the Milky Way...lots of interesting objects here!

If you step outside tonight after it gets a little dark and look to the south-south west you will see a triangle of bright objects: one a star (Arcturus) at the top, Saturn to the lower left, and Mars at the lower right (next to Spica in the constellation Virgo):

I purposed to photograph the Whirlpool Galaxy tonight just below the handle of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) Here is a shot of the Big Dipper to the west of my observatory roll-off roof:

Believe it or not (you had better!) this image of the Whirlpool Galaxy is the result of stacking 38 5-second shots using a program for Mac called "Lynkeos." Simply amazing given that you could hardly make out anything in the 5 second shots! This galaxy is also known as M51.

  

Finally I took a "circumpolar" photograph by pointing the camera at the "North Star" (Polaris) and leaving the shutter open for about 10 minutes. You can see the earth's rotation creating little arcs in the stars!

Well that is all for one night! Maybe I'll get three nights in a row!

God is good!

FINALLY...SUMMER and CLEAR skies!

Yes, it has been a LONG time since the weather and my schedule lined up, more the weather than my schedule, though!
So last night I got out under the clearest skies since winter and here are some results!

I broke out my small Bushell scope (see earlier post for a review of it) and captured the thin crescent moon:

First up, some test "wide field" views with a 40mm "pancake" lens on my Canon Rebel t3i:

Here you can see what I have to deal with when looking south from my observatory position: lots of tall pine trees! You can see Antares in the lower center.

Here is Cygnus (The Swan) nearly overhead at midnight, swimming in the Milky Way.

 And just to the north of Cygnus, more of the Milky Way

I know this is a rather mundane shot of the "Big Dipper" otherwise known as Ursa Major (The Big Bear" but it helped me locate M101 galaxy!

 
This is my first attempt at this galaxy and I only stacked about 5 images in Lynkeos, using my old Orange C8 scope with Celestron's focal reducer and prime focus (cropped for this image).
But other objects lured my attention last night as well!

Next up: Mars!
Earth is moving away from Mars now and it is smaller with less detail than it had only a month ago. You can also see that it is no longer round, due to the fact that we are seeing it at an angle now.

Ah, but Saturn was serenely calling for a view!
Saturn was spectacular last night! In a good moment you could just make out Cassini's Division in the the two rings! This image you can also see a faint band on Saturn itself.

But here is what it looks like in color:

But my night wasn't over yet! The Ring Nebula was beautiful, too!

Again, I had the focal reducer on the scope to let in more light and keep the exposure times shorter. I will make this object the subject of greater efforts to get more detail out of it this summer!
Finally, I just had to photograph M13, the great globular star cluster in the constellations Hercules. It was overhead and just a joy to view and photograph!

Wow! God's creation has so much variety and is wondrous to behold!

Stay tuned more more!

Mars a month after oppostion

Well the weather surprisingly was clear last night and the air fairly steady so I was able to capture this image of Mars with my old orange Celestron C8, Canon t2i body mounted in eyepiece projection (9mm) and selected images stacked with Lynkeos.

Here is what CalSky said a telescope like mine should see:

Not too bad for the weather conditions and such! We have had nothing but unuseable weather for the past 2 weeks so it was great to get outside for a session in the observatory.

The air was sweet and the temperature was comfortable, too ! Closed up just after midnight! God is good!

Another photo of April, 2014 Lunar Eclipse

Taken just after totality began and just before the clouds moved in and obstructed the view for the night.

April, 2014 Lunar Eclipse from my observatory!

Jupiter under poor viewing conditions

The weather is starting to clear up but the air is still quite soupy (lots of atmospheric turbulance.)
But I thought I would give it a try anyway last night since Jupiter was right overhead at about 9 pm.
Celestron C8 Classic
Canon T2i
Eyepiece projection right onto the CCD with 28mm eyepiece.
Cropped 620x480 movie mode
Lynkeos software
Stack of 20 images, cropped
Final sharpening with Macbook Preview