The Dutch Observatory

Well, 4 of us, Frank Garner, Dan Schmitt, Jon Wood (Yes Jon!!) and I, setup scopes this mornig early to image the LCROSS impact. However at 5:00am we were covered with a blanket of clouds. Eventually they went away, but just about 5 minuts before the impact, a thin blanket of clouds moved in. The first avi 1/2 minute after the impact was reasonable but the others became worse as time went on.  The processed images did not look different than the once I took two days ago for the trial run, except the quality was a lot worse.
Shown here is an animated sequence covering a period of 5 minutes.  From Two minutes prior, to 3 minutes after the impact.  The only change in the images is the level of overexposure caused by the density of the clouds moving through.  The target area is just inside the crater and a little left of the overexposed area on the left. (Click the thumbnail to activate the animation).  Don’t forget to look at the movie I made of this event on YouTube.

     

Watching NASA afterwards, it looked like we did not miss anything, because all visible observations they showed did not show a plume either.  I wish NASA would not have made such a hipe out of the LCROSS mission and get all those kids involved in observing. It must be a let down for them not to have seen a plume.

This is my first attempt to image an eclipse between two Gallilean moons.  This morning between 6:21 UT and 6:28 UT, the shadow from Io did transit  Ganymede.  This was an annular eclipse, but because of the difference in size of the two moons the drop in intensity of Ganymede was 0.35.  The animation makes up 18 frames between 6:16 UT and 6:34 UT with the transit being captured in frames 6-12 of the animation.  Because I wanted to have Jupiter in the image the moons are a little under exposed.  All images were processed the same:  250 out of 500 frames captured at 1/27 sec in IC Capture, stacked in Registax with mild wavelets applied (same setting for all).  No additional processing was performed in Photoshop.  Photoshop was only used to create the animation.  My next attempts of occultations or eclipses will require to increase the maginification for a better resolution.  Please click the image to start the animation.

Today is the third day I imaged the conjunction of Venus, the Moon, Jupiter and Mercury. I made a special trip to Charlie Elliott to get the same horizon which I had in the previous images and put the three days in one picture showing how the objects moved during the three day period.  The Moon looked spectacular next to Venus with Jupiter and Mercury sitting side by side just above the horizon.  What a way to say goodbye to 2008!!
(Click the image below to see the larger picture. Jupiter and Mercury are in the bottom/right of the images)

The moon is moving up closer to Venus and Jupiter and Mercury moved close to each other as they get ready for a great conjunction of December 31.  This image was made at Charlie Elliott the evening of 12/30/2008.  The sky showed large streaks of thin clouds, which moved in front of the Moon and Jupiter and Mercury.  In this image they all seemed to come through, but Jupiter and Mercury are very low in the sky.  From top to bottom: Venus, Moon, Jupiter and Mercury.

The images below are the “Perigee Moon”, the biggest moon of the year.  The moon today is closesed to Earth in its eliptical orbit around the Earth.  It also is about 14% wider and 30% brighter today than lesser Moons of the year.  I took the images half way between my house and Hard Labor Creek Park, since the moon rise was obstructed from my home.  I am glad I drove half a mile and ended up with these images.

The Moon, Venus and Jupiter came in a beautiful conjunction in the evening of December 1, 2008.  Since the forecast was cloudy skies for Social Circle, I went out the night before and captured some images from the trio the night before, just in case.  However, after a cloudy sky all day long, the skies over Walton county cleared up between 4:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon and gave way to a beautiful sight.  Here, two images of the nigt of the conjunction (Venus and Jupiter are 2 degrees apart), and one from the night before.

Here some images of the Moon from the evening of July 11th made at Charlie Elliott. Since my CPC was still in repair, Jon, let me put my camera on the back of his LX200R and run some AVIs of several objects on the moon. The air was very unstable and the wind caused the image to float a lot. The fog drifted in and out again.  However, the results are not too bad.

The full Moon of June 18th was a “solstice moon”, coming only two days before the beginning of northern summer. This is significant because the sun and full Moon are like kids on a see-saw; when one is high, the other is low. This week’s high solstice sun gives us a low, horizon-hugging Moon and a strong Moon Illusion.
However, I did get a double treat!!  In addition to the Moon illusion, the Moon and the surrounding sky was deep orange.  What a sight!!