The Sun has been very active lately with many sunspots showing up on its surface but today for the first time in a long time its solar surface spotless, so I just had to take a picture :-)
 
Image taken with my Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter attached making a focal length of 1280mm.  Twenty images were captured with an exposure of 1/500th second and ISO100, images were stacked in RegiStak6 and processed in PS CS4.
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Movie taken with Canon 70D camera on movie mode (I said 15th instead of 16th of September…Oops)

The Sun has these incredibly active sunspot groups on its surface numbered AR2866 & AR2868 with another sunspot developing not far away numbered AR2869.
The two smaller sunspots nearing the western limb are AR2863 & AR2865.
 
I’m at my Stardust Observatory this weekend and just had to take some images of these wonderful active regions on the solar surface  :-)

My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter attached…. The exposure was 1/500th second and ISO100, 20 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PSCS4.

Movie taken with my Canon 70D and Canon 100-400mm lens plus 2x teleconverter = Focal length 1280mm

I was out at my Stardust Observatory and even though it was a lovely clear sky all around me, when I went to take a photo of the setting Sun, there was this huge smoky band on the western horizon from a large bushfire. Within minutes the Sun was setting into the thick fiery atmosphere and being pulled into an egg shape!
 
I had to quickly take the solar filter off the lens to capture the Sun as it was disappearing into the thick smog; it went this amazing bright pink colour before it completely disappeared…it was very exciting. You can also just make out those two large sunspot groups AR2866 & AR2868 on the surface.

My images were taken on my last new moon weekend, with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter taken off the lens, the thick smoke acted as filter.
(This is the real hot pink colour of the Sun with no processing)

On the evening of the 10th September the 3 day old waxing crescent Moon came to within 4 degrees of Venus low in the western sky. With this phase of the Moon you can also see that wonderful celestial phenomenon called earthshine displayed on the lunar surface.
 
Earthshine is now well understood as sunlight from Earth’s clouds being reflected back onto the lunar surface producing this beautiful soft glow on the Moons unlit surface.
 
I post a lot of my images onto Dr Tony Phillips website called Spaceweather.com
​Dr Phillips has written an article call ‘What is the Da Vinci Glow?’ It’s a very interesting read, please go to the link below and see how Leonardo Da Vinci over 500 years ago worked out what earthshine really was :-)
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/05/16/what-is-the-da-vinci-glow/
 
I found this really nice YouTube video by Dr John Mason from the Southern Downs Planetarium & Science Centre. Where he takes you outside into the garden to look at the Earthshine on the Moon and view the De Vinci Glow. His view on this night was very similar to what I have captured here with my image.

In this video Dr John Mason talks about the magnificent conjunction of the crescent moon and the brilliant planet Venus.

What a stunning view it was this evening in the western sky at my Stardust Observatory, with the crescent Moon near Mercury and Venus above with the star Spica not far away.

Its not very often you can see or even capture this elusive planet as its orbit is very quite close to the Sun, also you have to have a clear western horizon even to see tiny Mercury low in the sky.

My Image was taken at my Stardust Observatory with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm lens @28mm; exposure time was 4 seconds and ISO400 :-)

It was clear again this evening to capture another image of Jupiter, in this picture you are able see the other side of the planer with out the GRS.
 
You can see some quite large White Ovals in the South Temperate belts and zones and in the North Temperate Zone you can see some Dark Spots. That very dark band is called the North Temperate Belt.
 
Jupiter is such an interesting planet to observe, as the Jovian atmosphere is so turbulent, you see can discover new features every time you look at it, which is very exciting :-)

​I’ve been trying to get a clear night all month to capture the rotation of the GRS on Jupiter. Tonight I managed to finally capture it, but because of the turbulent atmosphere the first set of images as the GRS come into view were not the best.
 
After about an hour the sky settled down and I was able to get some really nice pictures as the GRS rotated toward the western limb.
 
I’ve done something different this time in displaying Jupiter, where I’ve used two images of Jupiter with a time difference of just 8 minutes between each capture, that's enough time to show a slight difference in the rotational movement.
 
When you display these two images side by side it looks like just a normal images, but if you relax and slightly cross your eyes, then the planet pops out like it’s sitting there in 3D space…really cool :-)
 
Images were taken on the 6th September with a 10inch Meade GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. An AVI movie was captured with 3000 frames, stacked in RegiStax6, and processed in PS CS4.

Wow…just like that, there’s a sprinkling of active sunspots on the Sun today!

The Sun looked very spotty with many active sunspots across its surface and some small prominences around the limb, The Active Regions are 2863, 2864, 2866 and 2868. The Sun is really starting to get quite active now with sunspots sprouting up nearly every day now.
 
The white light image was taken with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter attached…. The exposure was 1/500th second and ISO200, 20 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PSCS4.
 
The H Alpha Image was taken with a Lunt 60mm H-alpha telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 3x Barlow lens. Two sets of images were taken, one for the disc and another for the faint prominences and combined in PS.
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What a surprise I got tonight when I looked at my images of Saturn and saw a gap in the rings beside the planet???
 
Then I worked out that it must be the planets shadow being cast on its rings as the Suns light is blocked by the planets disc. ..Wow, how exciting it that!
 
When I took pictures of Saturn last month at opposition, the Suns light was directly facing Saturn and the rings were fully lit, now this is very interesting because it shows that you can see remarkable changes in the planets every time you look at them!
 
Image was taken on the 6th September with a 10inch Meade GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. An AVI movie was captured with 2500frames, stacked in RegiStax6, and processed in PS CS4.

I’ve set my Meade LX200 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope here at home to capture images of Venus, Jupiter & Saturn that are now gracing our evening skies for the next couple of months.
 
Venus is always extremely hard to capture because of our Earths turbulent atmosphere, but if you sit and wait sometimes you’ll be lucky enough to just get a few minutes of stillness, Venus is now showing a smaller gibbous phase than last month.
 
Please see my entry from last month at:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-brilliant-venus-in-the-early-evening-sky
 
Image was taken with a 10inch Meade GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached.
​An AVI movie was captured with 2500frames, stacked in RegiStax6, and processed in PS CS4.