March 18th Moon Reprocessed
I reprocessed a Moon photo from September 4th 2004.
March 17th Moon Reprocessed
I wasn't happy with the Moon photo I took two days before, so I reprocessed it.
I also processed Moon shots from September 1st 2004.
A close-up from October 2nd 2024 showed much better results.
March 15th 2130 GMT Moon
I snapped the Moon with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal
length, ISO 100 and 1/160 second exposure. I tried some closer shots but my
back started hurting.
March 15th 1930 GMT Moon with Jupiter
I snapped the Moon and Jupiter with my phone camera.
March 13th 1835 GMT Moon
There was a bit of clearing sky at dusk. I snapped the Moon
with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.
March 6th 1930 GMT Comet or not, revisited
I started earlier, while the last haze of dusk had nearly
gone. I also moved further away from the streetlights. I had concentrated my
search in the wrong part of the sky the evening before, although it was
probable that I had my binoculars in the right place more than once.
I started with Jupiter again, to focus my binoculars but
only saw one moon this time. I moved to the Andromeda Galaxy and searched
slowly towards the horizon. It took several tries before I saw a fuzzy patch on
a hazy part of sky. It looked nothing like a comet, more like a globular star
cluster or galaxy. It looked not that different from the Pinwheel Galaxy in
Triangulum. With the background haze, it was not possible to photograph it.
It was hazy near the horizon all around the sky. The Tau
Canis Majoris cluster looked very sparse, showing only the brighter stars, as
did M41, the other notable star cluster in Canis Major, not far from Sirius.
I revisited the objects from the evening before viewing the
Beehive cluster.
March 6th 1230 GMT Sun
The sky was clear but my binoculars could still only detect
the two sunspots I had seen the day before.
March 5th 2015 GMT Comet or Not
It was rather later than I intended and the expected
position of Comet Pons-Brooks was too low to see from the back garden. I went
out the front of the house where there were more streetlights. OK, being a
newbuild estate, the lights were the sort astronomers campaigned for but I lost
about half a magnitude.
I used Jupiter's moons to get binocular focus and saw 2
moons to the south west.
The Andromeda Galaxy was clear, despite being low. I figured
that the comet would be about the same brightness as the Pinwheel Galaxy in
Triangulum. I could see it but only just but then I knew where to look. I tried
hard but could not see the comet.
As I was outside, I looked at the deep sky objects. Melotte
20, a very reliable star cluster, showed well, as did the Seven Sisters
(Pleiades) and Hyades, although I cannot get them in the same field of view in
my binoculars. I could see the Orion Great Nebula and M35, a star cluster in
Gemini.
I checked Betelguese and it appeared brighter than recently.
It was magnitude 0.6. This was unexpected, as most red giant variable stars
fade and brighten smoothly. Maybe the apparent fade was due to light cloud,
rather than the star dimming.
March 5th 1240 GMT Sun
There were plenty of small sunspots visible on the
professional observatory images but only the two largest and darkest were shown
by my binoculars and filters.
March 3rd 0845 GMT Sun
It was unusually sunny, so there was only one thing to do. I
took my Mak and DSLR outside and tool some photos at my usual settings of 1.54m
focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 seconds exposure.
I zoomed in to 4.62m focal length and increased the exposure
to 1/50 second and took two sets of regional shots.
March 2nd 2200 GMT Constellations
I retried the failed Lynx shot of the evening before using the same settings. It is at top centre of the photo, with Cancer near the centre and Leo Minor to the left. There are also parts of other constellations.
I then went for the head of Hydra. Catching the whole constellation is rather difficult if not impossible. As only a small part of Hydra was visible, so I went for that.
I also tried capturing the Plough with my phone camera more in hope than expectancy. I didn't catch anything.
March 2nd 2204 GMT Meteor
I was having another go at photographing the minor
constellation Lynx when a bright mag 1 meteor flashed south west through
Cancer. It was probably an Anthelion and the first I had ever seen.
March 2nd 2130 GMT Orion
I took some shots of Orion with my phone camera. I needn't have bothered, as I did not record any stars.
March 2nd 2050 GMT Betelguese
We had just returned to the house. The sky was quite clear
but not perfect. Betelguese was noticeably fainter than Procyon and not much
brighter than Aldebaran. It had faded to a magnitude of 0.7, maybe a shade
fainter.
March 1st 2040 GMT Lynx and Camelopardalis
I wanted to photograph two faint and difficult
constellations. Lynx is difficult and Camelopardalis is, well, worse. It was
not perfectly clear but I saw some of Lynx.
I used my normal constellation setup of my DSLR at 18mm
focal length, ISO 800 and 30 seconds exposure, then took some darks and hoped.
I hoped in vain, as the focus was out.