This is the first time I’ve had a clear night to view the star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion and it is the evening of the 29th February 2020 (Leap Day).  After taking images of the Moon and Venus (which I posted on my blog earlier today) I waited until Orion was getting low in the western sky to take some images to see how bright the star Betelgeuse was and in this very dark sky it was radiating brightly. Whatever has been happening with Betelgeuse seems to be sorting itself out…
I only have very basic equipment with me as we are camping and I didn’t expect
to be taking any images because of the many people with fires and lights in the camp ground, but we have found a lovely little corner where it’s very dark and I could not be happier out here with all the mosquitoes taking images of the night sky :-)
​
The image was taken at Flanagan’s Reserve near Rathdowney in QLD with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 24mm, the exposure time was just 10 seconds and ISO 2000, 10 images were stacked in DSS (Deep Sky Stacker) and processed in PS CS4.

 Moon & Venus (Leap Day)
My image were taken at Flanagan’s Reserve near Rathdowney and captures the beautiful scene that was happening in the western sky last night just after sunset on this very special leap day for the 29th February 2020, as this event only happens every 4 years, I really wanted to capture something special for the day :-)

The whole western sky had this beautiful purple coloured hue and I’m so happy it showed up in my photographs, we are away camping at the moment and the skies here are so clear for the first time in months.  Earlier I took a an image of the crescent Moon in a bright blue sky while waiting for Venus to show itself…it looked ever so pretty.

My images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, the wide field image exposure time was 1.3 seconds and ISO250 at F3.5. The crescent Moon image was taken with the same lens with a 2x converter attached making 1280mm focal length; the exposure was 1/250th second and ISO400. Ten lunar images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.
 

~ Our Sun on 20_02_2020 ~
 
I just had to take a photo of our Sun today for this special numerical date of the 20th of February 2020, because it’s such an awesome date to remember the year when solar minimum occurred…. and Yes, the Sun’s still ever so quite and spotless today :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens with a 2x converter (focal length 1280mm) with a glass solar filter attached to the lens for safe solar imaging. The exposure time was 1/400th second and ISO 320, 10 images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

To read more about our quite Sun and solar minimum please go to this excellent article written by Dr Tony Phillips from Spaceweather.com
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/12/17/sunspots-set-a-space-age-record/
 
If your are interested in keeping an eye on what the Suns doing daily, then please go to NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory website at:
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Goddard Space Flight Centre has just released two YouTube videos to celebrate
​SDO’s 10th Anniversary of watching the Sun.
Please see below the short video...'SDO Celebrates a Decade of Watching Sun'

Below is the longer and informative video called
‘Highlights From SDO’s 10 years of Solar Observation’
 
In February 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory — SDO — is celebrating its 10th year in space. Over the past decade the spacecraft has kept a constant eye on the Sun, studying how the Sun creates solar activity and drives space weather — the dynamic conditions in space that impact the entire solar system, including Earth.
 
Since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO has collected millions of scientific images of our nearest star, giving scientists new insights into its workings. SDO’s measurements of the Sun — from the interior to the atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output — have greatly contributed to our understanding of our closest star. SDO’s images have also become iconic — if you’ve ever seen a close-up of activity on the Sun, it was likely from an SDO image.

We’ve had a lot of rain over the last two months, but it’s been clear enough to take some lovely pictures of our beautiful Moon.
 
At this phase the eleven and a half day old Moon shows many of the dark lunar seas (Maria) on its surface. There are also some very prominent craters on display with the large craters called Tycho, Copernicus and Plato in view.
(I’ve marked some of the more interesting places on the surface in the second image)
 
The next eleven-day-old Moon will be on the 7th March 2020, you may like to revisit the Moon again and look at some of these wonderful features on the lunar surface with your binoculars or telescope.
 
If you live in the Northern hemisphere you may have noticed something different about my image, Yes, it’s upside down… that’s the way we view the Moon here in the Southern hemisphere ‘In the land down under’ J
 
My images were taken with a Meade 10inch LX200 Schmidt-Cassergrain telescope with a 6.3 focal reducer attached to capture the full disc of the Moon. I used a Canon 700D DSLR camera to capture the images, exposure time was 1/200th second and ISO100. Twelve images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

A severe thunderstorm hit the Gold Coast in Queensland on the afternoon of the 21st January and in only 35 minutes it went from a beautiful clear blue sky to a very threatening thunderstorm with high winds and torrential rainfall.
 
At 4.15pm I went outside and looked up and saw this strange cloud front racing in from the southern sky and within minutes it was right overhead. As I looked to the front of the cloud I could see this beautiful cloud shadow produced from the Sun being behind the clouds. When the cloud passed right above me I also saw these strange very dark wispy streaks fanning out from underneath the cloud system. (Not sure what was happening here)
 
Thunder was now being heard and the whole sky looked very dark and quite menacing indeed. I raced out to the front of my house, which faces east and to the water, and as you can see from my image above the whole sky was just so dark and threatening, everything outside was in a monotone colour…very eerie, then the thunderstorm hit with all its awesome power!
 
These types of severe thunderstorm clouds are called cumulonimbus and carry the most dangerous weather with them including very strong winds, large hail and torrential rain.

Please see a slideshow below of what happened in our sky in only just 35 minutes!

Australia is a very harsh country; over the last six months we’ve had one of the most severe droughts, with terrible bush fires, now flooding rains have started to arrive to give new life to our country.
 
Australian Bureau of Meteorology: What is a severe thunderstorm?

I’m always looking for atmospheric phenomena in the sky, but while away in our caravan over the holidays I was washing up the dishes and to my amazement saw this colourful corona in one of the glasses.
 
We have all seen coloured soap suds from an incoming light source but this is the first time I have ever seen this light so uniformed and concentric. There is a lot of science here just in this glass of soapsuds, just like when a corona is seen around the Sun or Moon it has to do with the Suns light.
 
But in this case the light from the sun is not being refracted through ice crystals,
​but interacting with the thin layer of soap film and producing this amazing effect right here in a glass.
I wonder what you will see next time you wash up the dishes :-)
 
The image was taken on the 18th January at Lennox Head in NSW with a Canon GX7 Mark11 camera, exposure 1/160th second and ISO 125.

I just love it when a large cumulus cloud covers the Sun and the Suns light filters through the gaps in the clouds and produces these awesome looking sunrays.
 
The best time to see them is when the sun is rising or setting in the sky, this one was taken at 5.20pm in the afternoon, so have a look next time the Sun is setting to see if you can see this very pretty phenomenon…and don’t forget to take a picture :-)
 
The image was taken with a Canon GX7 Mark ll camera with the lens set at 24mm (wide field) exposure time was 1/320th second and ISO200.
Please Note: It’s important to set the lens to the manual setting at (infinity)
​because these point and shoot cameras will not be able to auto focus on clouds.
 
To find out more on how these sunrays are produced please got to the link below:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/ray1.htm
This is an excellent website created by Les Cowley that has an enormous amount of different atmospheric objects that you can seen in the sky:
Atmospheric Optics:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk
 
~ Keep Looking Up ~
Because you’ll never know what you’ll find up there in our amazing sky :-)

~ Spectacular planet Venus still on show in the western sky ~
 
During January we've had a lot of rain and the sky's been very cloudy most of the time. I did manage to capture another picture of Venus the other night and the planet's now showing a slightly smaller gibbous phase.
​
(Please see my Venus blog from the 18th December when we had a lot of bush fire haze in the sky).
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-spectacular-planet-venus-now-on-show-in-the-western-sky
 
I was also able to capture some swirling cloud on the surface, which was exciting to see in the image. Venus is an interesting planet to observe because it’s an inner planet from us and closer to the Sun so it displays phases just like our Moon. I will try and capture some more images over the coming weeks in between this cloudy weather.
 
I have included imaging details on the photo; a short AVI movie of 800 frames was captured and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. 

As you can see from my photographs above, I don’t have much room in my garden for a western view of the sky,
​I also have to contend with a caravan as well,
​but I always make do with what I have and as long as I capture the event…I’m very happy :-)
 
Images of Venus were taken with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a wide field lens attached.
AVI movie files were captured which were then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. 

Venus hides a wealth of information that could help us better understand Earth and exoplanets. NASA's JPL is designing mission concepts to survive the planet's extreme temperatures and atmospheric pressure. 
 
The image above is a composite of data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

Sue Smrekar really wants to go back to Venus. In her office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the planetary scientist displays a 30-year-old image of Venus' surface taken by the Magellan spacecraft, a reminder of how much time has passed since an American mission orbited the planet. The image reveals a hellish landscape: a young surface with more volcanoes than any other body in the solar system, gigantic rifts, towering mountain belts and temperatures hot enough to melt lead.
 
Now superheated by greenhouse gases, Venus' climate was once more similar to Earth's, with a shallow ocean's worth of water. It may even have subduction zones like Earth, areas where the planet's crust sinks back into rock closer to the core of the planet.
 
"Venus is like the control case for Earth," said Smrekar. "We believe they started out with the same composition, the same water and carbon dioxide. And they've gone down two completely different paths. So why? What are the key forces responsible for the differences?"
 
Smrekar works with the Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG), a coalition of scientists and engineers investigating ways to revisit the planet that Magellan mapped so many decades ago. Though their approaches vary, the group agrees that Venus could tell us something vitally important about our planet: what happened to the superheated climate of our planetary twin, and what does it mean for life on Earth?

To read more of the story please go to:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7558
For more information about Venus, visit:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/overview/
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/all-about-venus/en/

By studying this mysterious planet, scientists could learn a great deal more about exoplanets, as well as the past, present, and possible future of our own. This video below unveils this world and calls on current and future scientists to explore its many features. Credit: NASA

I decided to set my other telescope up in all this heat today to see if that new sunspot could be seen developing on the surface of the Sun, it was very very faint but YES…there is was, I got it :-)
 
There was a lot of heat haze and high thin cloud in the sky so I was extremely lucky to even capture the sunspot, it’s not been designated any number yet but I’m sure it won’t be long.
 
To find out more about this new solar cycle just keep checking the Spaceweather.com website at: https://www.spaceweather.com
 
The images were taken with a 127mm refractor at prime focus that was fitted with a solar filter. I used a Canon 700D camera to take the pictures, exposures times were 1/500th second and ISO 200. Twelve images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

This is my telescope set-up that I used to take a picture of the Sun on the 9th January 2020. I used a 127mm (5inch) refractor with an Orion glass solar filter attached to the front lens.

(DANGER: Never look through a telescope without a solar filter)
 
The little Tele Vue Sol Searcher that you see on top of the telescope is just a wonderful piece of inexpensive equipment for lining up the Sun. It has a hole at the front, which the sunlight passes through and falls onto a clear screen when the telescope is lined up with the Sun. I would not be without this great little gadget :-)

This is the first, first quarter Moon for the New Year and it was a lovely clear evening for taking pictures through my telescope. I was a little late to try and capture the X on the terminator line but the big three lunar craters Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus & Arzachel looked spectacular with their sunlit peaks.

The close up images were taken with a Meade 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a focal reducer attached.
 
AVI movie files were captured which were then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. The full lunar disc was taken with a Canon 700D, I had to put a F6.3 focal reducer in the telescope system to capture the wide field view of the Moon.