90 MilliMeters

Posts Tagged ‘Astronomy’

I’m going to try and get out there a little early tonight with my binoculars for a little scanning through Cassiopeia. The moon will rise around 8:18 PM EDT but will remain low enough until around 9:00 PM to get a few good views in. I guess I’m getting a little anxious. Before the full moon this month it skies were cloudy, now that we’re a few days past full moon and headed toward third quarter the skies have been clear but unsteady so seeing has been very poor. Makes me a little crazy sometimes. I was hoping to get some planetary observing done with Jupiter being so well placed, but, as you know, when seening is poor, objects in the eyepiece just boil.

Speaking of scanning through Cassiopeia, did you know, If we were able to observe our Sun from Alpha Centauri, the Sun would appear in Cassiopeia as a yellow-white 0.5 magnitude star. The famous ”W”of Cassiopeia would become a zig-zag pattern with the Sun at the leftmost end. Cassiopeia is positioned directly in the Milky Way.

Finally tonight we got some clear skies. I didn’t have much time to observe so I setup quickly and looked around while my eyes adapted to the dark. By the time my eyes were ready I could see the 4.3 mag. stars in the little dippers handle.

I went right to Beta Cygnus (Albireo).  This is one of my favorite double stars. It’s an easy split in my 90mm at x40 and the colors of the primary – a yellow or almost Gold and the secondary – Blue are always pleasing.

M31. Andromeda Galaxy. In my 90mm at x40 this galaxy has a bright core with an elongated smudge. With adverted vision I could just detect a dark lane near the center.

That’s all I really had time for tonight. Got a busy day tomorrow.

Clear Skies!

But so what? It was late and I had a long day designing a website for a fussy client and just didn’t feel like getting out my scope so, I grab my trusty binoculars. Nothing major about my binoculars, 7 x 35, kind of small for astronomy. But hey, it’s what I got.

So, what’s cool to look at? I looked at the moon, of course. saw some craters. I know many seasoned amature astronomers don’t bother to look at the moon so much because they looked at it a thousand times. So have I and I will continue to look at the moon because it’s still interesting. Always will be.

Next, I turned my attention to Jupiter. Perfectly placed for viewing. Even though my binocluars are small, I can still see the largest moons. The area of sky where Jupiter is currently placed was awash with moon light but I could still make out two of the moons on one side of the big planet and, I suspected one on the other side, but I couldn’t be sure.

Maybe tonight, if all is quite, I’ll take out my camera and try to capture Jupiter. We shall see.

It’s been hot and hazy for the past week and the skies are murky at best. After a long hiatuses, I’m anxious to get back out under the stars. Since the skies are a bit hazy, I stroll outside around 10:00pm local time and behold, the skies are a little better than I thought.

Since photography is another passion of mine, I always wanted to try shooting the night sky. I don’t know why I haven’t tried it before, just busy I guess. So, I grab my DSLR and tripod and make my first attempt at astrophotography.

Not knowing what to expect, I setup my camera in manual mode, a Pentax*ist DS (a 6.1 megapixel camera) with an smc Pentax-DA 18 – 55mm lens set at 24 mm;  f/4.0; ISO 3200; tungsten white balance.

First test - image 1