I was able to take some more images of this wonderful huge Sunspot late yesterday afternoon and this time I used my little planetary ZWO camera, which showed so much more detail around the active area than the DSLR images that I took on the 26th November 2020.
 
We are having a heat wave here at the moment so it’s very very hot outside taking pictures of the Sun…but it’s worth it :-)
 
Images were taken on the 28th November, with a 127mm refractor telescope fitted with a glass solar filter and using a ZWO 120 MC-S camera. The camera was at prime focus for the first image, and then I attached a 3x Barlow lens for the higher magnification images. AVI movie files were captured with 2500 frames and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

~ Sunspots AR2786, AR2785 & AR2783 ~
On the 26th November 2020 
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​It’s very exciting to see the Sun becoming so active again and this new active region AR2786 is really putting on a spectacular display, smaller sunspots are now developing close by and it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the couple of days :-)
 
Images were taken on the 26th November 2020 with a 127mm refractor telescope fitted with glass solar filters for safe viewing and imaging of the Sun (Please see my setup image attached) using a Canon 700D camera.
 
The full disc image was taken at prime focus with ISO200 & 1/640th second exposures. The close up image had a 2x Barlow lens attached, exposures were 1/60th second and ISO 400, twenty images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

(Please be careful looking at the Sun)

~ Moon with Jupiter & Saturn ~
 
The five-day-old waxing crescent Moon looked just stunning in the evening sky last night as it made a close encounter with the planets Jupiter and Saturn.
 
All three celestial bodies were enclosed within a 6-degree circle in the constellation of Sagittarius with the Moon and Jupiter only 2 degrees away from one another.
 
Keep watching the western sky after sunset as Jupiter and Saturn get closer and closer for their 20-year conjunction on the 21st December 2020…what an amazing view it will be for Christmas J
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm @128mm, exposure time was 2 second and ISO640.

This is the first chance I’ve had to image this huge sunspot AR2781 because of cloud cover and its now facing toward the Earth on the solar surface.
 
This is the biggest sunspot of the new Solar Cycle 25 and it looks like the Sun is now awakening from its slumber!
 
There have been some really stunning images posted on Spaceweagther.com one in particular is from Alan Friedman, which featured on the front page at:
https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=09&month=11&year=2020
 
The image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens with a 2x converter making a focal length of 1280mm, which was mounted on a non-tracking camera tripod. 15 images were stacked in RegiStax 6 and processed in PS CS4, the e27812727xposure time was 1000th second and ISO320.

Wow! Mars is looking absolutely stunning with so much detail on the planets surface, I had to battle with some fast moving cloud but I’m just so very happy with my image :-)
 
The image taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI movie file was captured with 3000 frames and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

After taking pictures of the Moon for InOMN I then turned my attention to the planets, which were all on show in the night sky.
 
At the moment there are Jupiter and Saturn high up in the northern sky that are getting closer together and heading for a conjunction in two months time on the 14th December 2020.
 
Then the brilliant planet Mars getting higher up now in the north-eastern sky and putting on such a wonderful display with many features on show on the surface of the planet, opposition of Mars will be on the 14th October 2020.
 
Hopefully the sky will be clear enough for me to take some incredible images of our two planets coming close tighter and there seems to be no sign yet of any dust storms…yippee :-)

Images taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies were captured with between 2500 & 3000 frames then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4

~ InOMN at My Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in Qld Australia ~
(Saturday the 26th September 2020)
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/
 
Because of Covid-19, I decided to drive out to my Stardust Observatory in country Queensland and just have an up close and personal experience with our Moon :-)
 
It was a beautiful clear night with no clouds at all in the sky and the most notable lunar features on display on the terminator line were the magnificent Crater Copernicus and the huge Crater Clavius in the southern highlands, which looked just stunning.
 
I did manage to show a couple of people the Moon through my telescope as they were visiting the owners of the property where my observatory is located, there were many exclamations of Wow…is that for real!
 
So I feel very happy to have shown some people the beauty of our Moon :-)
 
If you participated in InOMN please download you certificate at:
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/participation-certificate/
 
The close up images that I took with the little ZWO camera are just amazing, so much detail on show…I’m very pleased with the result and will do a lot more lunar imaging with this camera in the coming months….
 
Images were taken with 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a Canon 700D camera for the full disc image, and then adding a 2x barlow lens to take closer pictures of the lunar features on the terminator line. I then replaced the DSLR camera with my ZWO ASI120MC-S camera and a 3x Barlow lens to capture the high-resolution images of the lunar surface.

If you participated in InOMN please download you certificate at:
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/participation-certificate/
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We managed to grab a couple of days to visit the Queensland North Coast at Noosa last weekend and were rewarded with this magical sunset over Lake Doonella at Tewantin. While I was taking my pictures there was a very lucky fisherman reeling in quite a few flathead fish for his dinner :-)
 
If you look closely at the image you’ll see some really unusual clouds that look like fine hair floating in the sky. These clouds are called Cirrus clouds and it looks like there is a very strong wind shear up there making them spread out like fine filaments.
 
I’ve never seen Cirrus cloud in this pattern before; it looks like these particular clouds are called Cirrus fibratus clouds…how exciting!  Genus: Cirrus (curl of hair)
 
I found this information on Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_cloud
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera with a Tamron 18-400mm lens attached set at different focal lengths with an ISO 100.

​I can’t believe how big Mars is getting now as compared with just one month ago and the detail on the surface is just amazing…Woohoo! :-) :-) :-)
 
I took this image with some light cloud in the sky and can’t wait until we finally get a clear night to capture even more detail on the surface.

The image was taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached.

​An AVI movie file was captured with 1400 frames that was stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

Like all the planets in our solar system, Earth and Mars orbit the sun. But Earth is closer to the sun, and therefore races along its orbit more quickly. Earth makes two trips around the sun in about the same amount of time that Mars takes to make one trip. So sometimes the two planets are on opposite sides of the sun, very far apart, and other times, Earth catches up with its neighbour and passes relatively close to it.
 
Please read more at about the opposition of Mars at NASA Science Mars Exploration Program website at: https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/night-sky/opposition/
https://mars.nasa.gov
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The waxing gibbous Moon looked so pretty in the evening sky on the 29th August with its close conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn on the ecliptic in the eastern sky.
 
The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn are all fully within the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer) and you can see one of the familiar asterism of stars to the top of the image with the bright stars Nunki & Ascella.
 
The image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm lens @40mm; the exposure time was 4 seconds and ISO100.
 
I took another image at the same time with a shorter exposure of 1/60th second to capture some detail on the lunar surface and softly blended it into the image to closely show what was on view in the sky :-)