It was a lovely clear evening here last night to take some more images of the beautiful planets Jupiter and Saturn through my telescope.
 
This time the Great Red Spot was not on display but it was nice to see the other side of the planet with all the bluish swirls and dark coloured gases in the North Equatorial Belt. There were even some small white ovals on display in the southern zone area.
 
Saturn looked just stunning with its dark Cassini division on display and some cloud markings on the body of the planet.
 
Both Jupiter and Saturn are to scale in size as I used the same imaging setup for both of the planets ☺
 
My image was taken with a Meade LX200 (GPS) 10inch telescope at prime focus using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI movie files were captured with 2000 frames that were then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

Today marks the winter Solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere, so while most of you who live in the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing the longest day of the year, we here in the land down under are experiencing the shortest day of our year…. isn’t living on our Earth just amazing!
 
The Sun is indeed very quite and absolutely blank so no fireworks to celebrate this special event from the Sun :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens and 2x teleconverter making a focal length of 1280mm. I used a glass solar filter attached to the lens to safely image the sun. Eight images were stacked in RegiStax6, exposure time was 1/500th second and ISO200.

I had a rare perfect evening here last night to take lots of images of Jupiter as the planet rotated with the Great Red Spot on show, at 9.20pm (AEST) one of its moons called Europa headed toward the planet for a shadow transit.
 
Yet again the coloured gases around the Great Red Spot have changed and are now showing lovely shaped ripples to one side and a strange flipping up in the air of dark material on the other side. 
 
There also seems to be a type of swirling vortex in the centre of the storm, which is showing up quite clearly…its all very exciting watching all these changes day by day on Jupiter :-)
 
My image was taken on the 11th June 2019 just a day after opposition with a Meade LX200 10inch telescope at prime focus using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. An AVI movie file of 2000 frames were captured which were then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

~ Wow…Stardust Kids loved learning all about Black Holes at the Stardust Junior Astronomy Club  ~
 
I don’t know what it is about black holes but children always love to learn all about Black Holes, they are mysterious and dangerous so I think that’s why they are so appealing. Mind you, after our exciting space session they know not to go too close to one them in their space rockets or they won’t be coming home for dinner!
 
All the children had a lot of fun and they did lots of wonderful drawings, please see some of them below :-)
 
Please find below some excellent NASA links to children’s teaching resources:
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/StarChild.html

~ Black Hole Image Makes History ~
NASA News: APRIL 10, 2019
 
Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun.
 
To read all about this outstanding achievement please go to:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7372

It was a bit windy and the sky was still not the best for taking pictures, but I managed to capture a couple of images of the shadow of Europa as it transited across the body of Jupiter.
 
I did not know this at the time, but when I posted my image on spaceweather.com one of the contributors left a message to say that my image could be seen in 3D if I crossed my eyes…. and low and behold I did it and it was awesome!
 
It’s a bit tricky to do, I hope you can see it :-)
 
My image was taken with a Meade LX200 10inch telescope at prime focus using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI movie files of 2000 frames were captured which were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

In the early hours of the morning on the 30th May 2019, I got a chance to take a series of images (avi movies) of the Great Red Spot over a one and a half time period as the planet Jupiter rotated and made up these two montages.
 
One has five images showing clear images of the GRS as it clears the limb of the planet and the other one is just the three images showing the Great Red Spot on either side of the meridian crossing.
 
I did processed each image a bit more in RegiStax6 to bring out further detail of the rich coloured gases that are swirling around and surrounding the GRS. It seems that each night I view the planet more changes are taking place…it’s very fascinating!
 
I tried to make a Gif movie of these images but unfortunately I’ve not been successful as yet…but I’m trying :-)
 
My images were taken with a Meade LX200 10inch telescope at prime focus using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI movie files of at least 2000 frames were captured for each of the image and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.