Show Your Astrophotos

[SPrice]

The color gradation was a result of the lunar eclipse.  Cloudy all night with a 15 minute window when I snapped a dozen or so images just after the full eclipse.

[Missourian]

FYI / heads up / reminder:

 

There is an annular eclipse in North America on Oct 14th (Saturday):

 

 

Get your cameras ready

[Coco]

We will see nice pics !

 

Coco

[Missourian]

Testing the phone-cam/eclipse-glasses combo for the event:

 

It is easiest to take a video and then select the best frames

 

Be sure it first focuses on a background object like a tree or cloud

 

FYI, this is a phone-screen capture. The full-sized image can be captured in Firefox or possibly other browsers

[SPrice]

Lucky me it not only crosses Utah, but my favorite spot in Utah, The Last Chance Desert, during the New Moon phase. So not only the eclipse the next morning but also a session of astrophotography under a Bortle Class 1 dark sky.  And after the eclipse ends there happens to be 3-4 new to me fossil sites reputed to have Palm trees and Sequoias right beside the highway. So a fun weekend is planned with fingers crossed for clear skies for everyone viewing the eclipse.

Steve

 

Here's a couple of cell phone shots from my fossil hunting trip under the Harvest moon.  Ursa Major, the Big Dipper and the next morning Venus and Mercury. Mercury is down low near the vee notch on the horizon. 

 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by SPrice

[Missourian]

This is the best I could do in KC:

 

(This looks much better in video)

 

[Kane]

I'm hearing from various friends in Texas and 'Frisco who are saying the skies are not being terribly cooperative for the eclipse.

[snolly50]

Sol eagerly awaited his assignation with Selene, Queen of the Night. Although he had courted her with ardor from the beginning of time; she remained eternally fickle, yet flirtatious. Today it was clear his charm would again hold no sway. By the time the dancing pair neared the great Atlantic, Sol concealed his embarrassing failure by bidding a cloak of concealing cloud to appear. Latter in the day, Selene departed to attend her own rounds; prideful Sol blazed forth, banishing the cloud from His sky. Yet within his fiery heart, a greater fire continued to blaze. He continued to pine for the mysterious Selene.

 

To Humankind he turns his haughty face in denial of his lovesick longing....

 

 

 

Yet, in his blazing heart, he mopes with realization of the wisdom of this song...

 

 

[Coco]

@snolly50your words are as pretty as your pictures !

 

Coco

[FossilNerd]

4 hours ago, Kane said:

I'm hearing from various friends in Texas and 'Frisco who are saying the skies are not being terribly cooperative for the eclipse.

I can confirm this to be the case in Kentucky as well. Nothing but cold and clouds all day.

[fossilus]

Unfortunately, Houston was not in the 100% window for the eclipse, but we had clear skies and I did see this in my pool.  The neighbor's leaves acted as pinhole projectors and I was able to get this image:

 

 

 

[minnbuckeye]

1 hour ago, FossilNerd said:

confirm this to be the case in Kentucky as well. Nothing but cold and clouds all day.

ditto in Minnesota.

[JohnJ]

Central Texas

 

Pinhole shining on a paper plate.

[SPrice]

Utah had a great opportunity for totality during the eclipse. I had 318,000 reasons not to drive the two hours south to view it. Gas prices were @ $8.00 in the town of Manti and elsewhere in the totality zone. One AirBnB had rooms for $1000 a night. Bryce Canyon already had over 300,000 tourists show up for this event.  One road in same road out. Massive traffic jams for 3 days - Fri-Sat- Sun. 

 

Nope, not for me. The same thing happened in Idaho a few years back. My neighbors and I watched it through a welder helmet and two pieces of glass from another welder mask. No cameras, just hanging out. It did get dim in our zone of 70% and the temp dropped 10 or more degrees. The shadows were the most fun.  One  crappy cell pic through the welder mask.

[Al Dente]

Here’s Venus during the daytime. Last week it was near the crescent moon. The trick to spotting it during the day is to locate it before sunrise and note its position relative to the moon. After sunrise, if you can find the moon, you should be able to locate Venus. This photo was taken an hour after sunrise.

 

 

[minnbuckeye]

1 hour ago, Al Dente said:

Last week it was near the crescent moon

 

Here is an image of the crescent moon near Venus from last week.

[snolly50]

 

"The Sun watches what I do, but the Moon knows all my secrets." - J M Wonderland

[Top Trilo]

A few days ago I brought out the telescope for the first time in quite some time and turned my eye towards Jupiter which is at an astonishingly close 3.98AU from Earth, and the Pleiades Star Cluster had a mind boggling 28,460,000AU. My telescope's frame size is way too small to capture the entire Pleiades star cluster so it is actually composited from 11 separate images. When viewing Jupiter I had to constantly adjust the telescope as it rose higher and higher in the sky. And just for a moment it dawned on me that I was literally fighting the rotation of the Earth itself! It took about an hour and a half of adjusting the telescope, waiting for the Earth to rotate, freezing in the dark, and taking videos to get these two images (plus countless inferior ones). Nevertheless I'm proud of them and when you take the time to actually think about what you are looking at, it makes it all worth it. I've also included the labels for Jupiter, the moons, and the stars.

 

 

 

 

[Wrangellian]

1 hour ago, Top Trilo said:

A few days ago I brought out the telescope for the first time in quite some time and turned my eye towards Jupiter which is at an astonishingly close 3.98AU from Earth, and the Pleiades Star Cluster had a mind boggling 28,460,000AU. My telescope's frame size is way too small to capture the entire Pleiades star cluster so it is actually composited from 11 separate images. When viewing Jupiter I had to constantly adjust the telescope as it rose higher and higher in the sky. And just for a moment it dawned on me that I was literally fighting the rotation of the Earth itself! It took about an hour and a half of adjusting the telescope, waiting for the Earth to rotate, freezing in the dark, and taking videos to get these two images (plus countless inferior ones). Nevertheless I'm proud of them and when you take the time to actually think about what you are looking at, it makes it all worth it. I've also included the labels for Jupiter, the moons, and the stars.

 

 

 

 

Well that's a better job than I could do, in all likelihood.

Did you do the labeling by hand or is there something that does it automatically? (I suppose the latter)   I like how the labels reflect the color of the object.

[Top Trilo]

3 minutes ago, Wrangellian said:

Well that's a better job than I could do, in all likelihood.

Did you do the labeling by hand or is there something that does it automatically? (I suppose the latter)   I like how the labels reflect the color of the object.

Thank you very much! I am blessed with clear skies and warmer temperatures most nights which I know is not the same in British Columbia.

 

I do label them manually. I use https://stellarium-web.org/ to find the names of the objects I am looking at, as it lines up wonderfully, and then add text boxes and copy and paste the names for each star on google slides. This time I decided to change the colors to match the objects to see if it is effective or distracting. I like it so far, thanks for your kind words.

[SPrice]

[Missourian]

Jupiter rising:

 

[snolly50]

Eastern Veil Nebula...

 

[Wrangellian]

On 11/7/2023 at 6:38 PM, Top Trilo said:

Thank you very much! I am blessed with clear skies and warmer temperatures most nights which I know is not the same in British Columbia.

 

I do label them manually. I use https://stellarium-web.org/ to find the names of the objects I am looking at, as it lines up wonderfully, and then add text boxes and copy and paste the names for each star on google slides. This time I decided to change the colors to match the objects to see if it is effective or distracting. I like it so far, thanks for your kind words.

You are correct, not so many clear/warm nights over here. Not the best place to stargaze by any measure.

Stellarium is a fun toy/tool.

[minnbuckeye]

Sat up in bed this morning, looked out the window, only to be greeted by this celestial sliver in the sky!!!!