~ 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/
​

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.

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 :-)

The waning gibbous Moon was a beautiful golden colour as it rose in the eastern sky just before midnight with the red planet Mars just above and only 3 degrees away from the planet.
 
I’ve also inserted an image of Mars in the photo to show what the planet looked like just a few hours later through my large telescope.
 
Below you will find the image of Mars where I have labelled some of the terrain on view, as the planet becomes closer to Earth in the coming months this detail will become a lot more detail.

The wide field image was taken at home with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens set at 200mm with ISO100 and a 1/15th exposure.
 
The inserted image of Mars 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 1200 fames and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.
 
Below I’ve also tried to do a 3D picture of Mars; if your able to slightly cross your eyes you will see the effect :-)

I was extremely lucky to have three clear evenings to capture the conjunction of the waxing gibbous Moon travelling through the constellation of Sagittarius to meet with the two gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. This event happened on the evenings of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of August 2020.
 
This event is quite rare as Jupiter and Saturn are only seen close together on the ecliptic every twenty years as they orbit about the Sun. To have all three celestial bodies in the same constellation, well that’s just awesome J
 
You’ll have another wonderful opportunity to see it all again on the evenings of the 24th, 25th & 26th of September with the waxing gibbous Moon.
 
All images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens on a tripod in my garden just before 6pm.  I had a bit of trouble selecting exposure times because the Moon was so bright and also a light twilight sky.
 
1st Image taken 1st August 2020: ISO640, exposure time 3.2sec at F5.6.
2nd Image taken 2nd August 2020: ISO640, exposure time 2 sec at f6.3.
3rd Image taken 3rd August 2020: ISO400, exposure time 2sec at f7.

It’s also interesting to note from the photographs at how much the Moon moves through the sky over the three nights, the Moon orbits the earth and the earth is also in movement orbiting the Sun.
​The Moon rises 50 minutes later each night because of this movement.
 
I found an interesting answer to my question on how fast does the Moon move in its orbit around the Earth from Robert Frost an Instructor and Flight controller at NASA who writes a weekly Quora blog.

To read more blogs by Robert Frost go to:
https://www.quora.com/profile/Robert-Frost-1

~ The beautiful colours of the “Belt of Venus” ~
​
This is such a pretty sky phenomena and all you have to do is look to the eastern sky after the Sun has set in the west to see these beautiful blue and pink colours spread across the sky.
 
My home faces east, so when it’s nice and clear I always race outside in the hope of seeing these pretty blue and pink hues of our Earths shadow in the sky.
 
Sometimes it's just a wisp of colour and very faint and at other times it’s very vibrant like my image above, I’m always on the look out for it, why don’t you try and see it too and perhaps take a picture.
 
What’s so remarkable about this image is that you don’t even have to leave Earth to see our planets shadow in space…. isn’t that just so awesome!
 
Image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens; focal length was set at 20mm and aperture at f3.5.  The ISO400 and the exposure time was 1/60th second, camera was on a tripod.
 
I took another image of the Full Moon embedded in the ‘Belt of Venus’ on the 6th June 2020 with lots of science information about this phenomenon, please go to that blog at:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-full-moon-immersed-in-dusty-pink-colours-of-the-belt-of-venus
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Comet Neowise was only discovered in March this year and has been putting on a spectacular show in the northern hemisphere.
 
We here in the southern hemisphere only had a brief chance for a few days to see the comet as it headed back out through the Solar System.
 
The only trouble was, the comet was very low in the western sky and could only be seen in twilight with moonlight from a nine-day-old Moon…so all in all, I’m amazed I even captured it near the cluster of stars (Mel 111) in Coma Berenices.
 
I’m so happy that people in the northern hemisphere were able to experience this wonderful comet, the last one we had here in Australia that put on an amazing show was Comet McNaught in 2007, which was just fantastic!!!
 
I wrote an Astroblog reminiscing it when Comet ISON was in our skies at:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-comet-ison-in-2013-comet-mcnaught-in-2007
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The sunspot is now looking very small in the 127mm refractor telescope as it rotates towards the western limb of the Sun on the 11th June 2020. During this afternoon observing session I was racing against time as cloud was coming all across the western sky.
 
After taking some images with the refractor I quickly removed it off the Pro HEQ5 mount and replaced it with the Lunt 60mm solar telescope to try and capture some images in Ha. (I always use this tracking mount when using both these telescopes)
 
It was really lucky to get a break in the cloud to capture just two AVI movie movies of the area with the Ha telescope before the whole sky clouded over and that was that…no more observing!
 
The white light image was taken with a 127mm refractor telescope that was fitted with a glass solar filter and using a Canon 700D camera.

​Just one image was captured with an exposure time of 1/320h second and ISO400.  The Ha image was taken with the Lunt solar telescope and a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera attached capturing an AVI movie file and stacking in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

The late afternoon sky looked just so pretty with the colours of pink and blue in the eastern sky and the neatly full Moon rising between the bands.
 
If you look to the eastern sky after the sun has set you will see this astronomical phenomenon know as the Belt of Venus it’s also know as the Girdle of Venus too. This dusty pink band layered between the blue sky above and the lower deep blue-grey band below runs all along the horizon before sunrise or after sunset.
 
It’s related to our Earths shadow which extends millions of kilometres out into space, so next time you are watching a beautiful sunset take a moment to turn around and see if you can see this spectacular phenomenon low in the eastern sky.
 
I have just found this very interesting website called World of Phenomena that explains the ‘Belt of Venus’ very well along with a lot of other incredible phenomena that you’ll find in the world and up above:
https://www.phenomena.org/atmospheric/beltofvenus/
 
Wikipedia ‘Belt of Venus’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_of_Venus
​

The both images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod.

​The wide field image is cropped to a vertical image and the exposure time was 1/160th second with ISO400. With the lunar image the lens was set at 400mm with an exposure time of 1/250th second and ISO400, eight images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4, image was also cropped.

It was quite late in the afternoon by the time I could finally take an image of this new sunspot on the surface of the Sun. I was having a lot of trouble trying to get some close detail on the sunspot and really could not understand why?
 
After packing up, I looked up towards Mt Tamborine and saw the reason why, a huge forest burn off was taking place and a large plume of smoke was spreading across the western sky. Because of where my telescope was setup between the two houses I was unable to see this smoke, Oh well, at least I was lucky enough to got some images of the sunspot even though they were a bit smoke affected :-)
 
My images were taken on the 5th June 2020, with a 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope that was fitted with a glass solar filter and using a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera with a focal reducer attached. The full disc image was taken with a Canon 700D camera, exposure time was 1/500th second and ISO200, 12 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. The sunspot looked quite small on the full disc of the Sun.

This new sunspot is from the next Solar Cycle 25, please read more about this from
​Dr Tony Phillips who pens the excellent website Spaceweather.com
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/12/25/reversed-polarity-sunspots-appear-on-the-sun/
 
Another site to keep a daily eye on the Sun is NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov