Comet Jacques C/2014 E2

This is an animation of Comet Jacques C/2014 E2 as it flies through Cassiopeia on August 23, 2014. This is its motion over just 17 minutes of time!
(Ignore the brightness increases and decreases as I was not intending to make an animation in the first place.)
It was only after I had closed up the observatory that I noticed the amount of motion in the images.

You may notice a bright small object near the end of the animation moving from the middle right. I do not believe it is a hot pixel nor is it a satellite (as it would have moved out of the field of view too quickly.) The only other possibility might be a bright asteroid?

Captured with my old orange Celestron C8, focal reducer, Canon t31, 6400 iso, prime focus, 10 to 20 sec exposure times, at about 11:45 pm August 23, 2014

Four visiters to the Observatory tonight!

Some friends of ours and two of their grandchildren observed the Moon, Saturn, Mars, the double star in the Northern Cross,  the triple star system in the Big Dipper, M13 globular cluster, the Ring Nebula, saw the ISS fly very close to Polaris, and a supply ship following after it, several satellites,  and more! A great time was had by all!

First Light with my 6 inch Meade LXD75

Skies finally cleared up tonight! So I broke out the latest addition to my observatory,  the 6 inch LXD75 scope. I was very impressed!  Both visual and DSLR images were crisp and had good contrast. Now I just wished that I had it sooner when Mars and Saturn were at opposition!
Sorry about me being in so msny of these photos but I wanted to give some scale to show just how big the scope is.

Meade LXD75 AR6-AT Achromatic Refractor Telescope with AutoStar

Just picked this scope off of craigslist for my observatory today. I have always wanted a refractor scope with goto ability but I wanted it to be large aperture. This scope is 6 wonderful inches! Now if only the skies would clear up from smoke (forest fires) and monsoon clouds! It is HEAVY, about 75 plus pounds but stable. It has a little slop in the RA motion but not noticeable when using the Autostar 497. Believe me this beast is visually impressive...Now the test will come soon on the heavenly objects.

Fires and Rain...preventing observation s

This has been a different summer with smoke from many forest fires (both human and lightning causes) as well as lots of cloudiness and thunderstorms... more than usual at this time of year. Please return to this blog soon!

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!