The surface features of Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) are coming into focus in these images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby on Jan. 1, 2019. These images, released Jan. 2, were taken a day earlier from a distance of 18,000 miles (28,000 kilometers) with a scale of 730 feet (140 meters) per pixels.

Ultima Thule spins like a propeller in space and looks like a bowling pin or peanut…how awesome is that!
 
News Release January 15, 2019
New Movie Shows Ultima Thule from an Approaching New Horizons
NASA Spacecraft Begins Returning New Images, Other Data from Historic New Year's Flyby
Please go to the link below to see the movie and other information on the mission.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190115
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php
https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons
​

This diagram suggests how the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, could have formed.

You can still see the pale green colour of the comet even through all these clouds!
 
My Photo taken of the comet 46P in between clouds on the evening of the 18th December, the comet was still in the constellation of Taurus just under the open star cluster called the Pleiades (The Seven Sisters).
No other photos were taken after this date because of the cloudy weather :-(
 
~ Please see below the news release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ~

​14th December 2018.
See a Passing Comet This Sunday
On Sunday, Dec. 16, the comet known as 46P/Wirtanen will make one of the 10 closest comet flybys of Earth in 70 years, and you may even be able to see it without a telescope.
 
Although the approach will be a distant 7.1 million miles (11.4 million kilometers, or 30 lunar distances) from Earth, it's still a fairly rare opportunity. "This will be the closest comet Wirtanen has come to Earth for centuries and the closest it will come to Earth for centuries," said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. What's more, Chodas said, "This could be one of the brightest comets in years, offering astronomers an important opportunity to study a comet up close with ground-based telescopes, both optical and radar."
 
Comet Wirtanen has already been visible in larger amateur telescopes, and while the brightness of comets is notoriously difficult to predict, there is the possibility that during its close approach comet Wirtanen could be visible with binoculars or to the naked eye.
 
Astronomer Carl Wirtanen discovered the comet in 1948 at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton in Santa Clara County, California. With a width of 0.7 miles (1.1 kilometers), 46P/Wirtanen orbits the Sun fairly quickly for a comet - once every 5.4 years - making it a short-period comet. (Long-period comets, on the other hand, have orbital periods greater than 200 years.) At the time of closest approach, the comet will appear to be located in the constellation Taurus close to the Pleiades.
 
Please find the link to this story at:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7306&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nasajpl&utm_content=daily-20181214-1
​

At last, after all the cloudy weather we’ve been having I finally got to see Comet 46/P in the eastern sky
and I must say it was very very faint!
You could only just make it out in a pair of binoculars as a small fuzzy spot but it was good enough to find and point the camera at to take some pictures.
 
I must add that I do live in suburbia and the light pollution is pretty high…I’m sure if I could have got out to my Stardust Observatory in a dark sky it would have looked more spectacular!
 
I had to be quick as cloud started rolling in again so I grabbed my camera and tripod and started to take some images, by the time I took a couple of pictures the whole sky clouded over and that was that!!!
 
I was just really happy to be able to see it and actually take some photos :-)

Imaging information for the Comet:
For the wide field image above I used a Canon 70D camera and a Tokina 11-16mm lens @11mm and slightly cropped, with an exposure time of 15 seconds and set at f2.8, ISO1000.

The image below was taken with a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens @73mm and image was cropped.
​Exposure time was just 2.5 seconds and ISO6400 to capture the comet at such a short exposure.
 
I’m hoping it’s going to clear up enough to take some images on the 16th of December
​when the comet is closest to Earth…. here’s hoping for the best :-)

~ TEDx Helensvale Library ~
Gold Coast Libraries are very excited to announce the release of seven TEDx Talks from our recent TEDx Helensvale Library event!
 
Seven stories from inspirational Gold Coast locals sharing their passions for architecture, ballet, circus, music, astronomy and social enterprise. Watch the videos now and be inspired to MAKE IT! 

The presenters on the night were:
(L Top) Karl Smith, Kristy Seymour, Noeleen Lowndes, Barry Lee, Nicolle Edwards,
Jordyn de Boer & Georgia Canning.

~ Starry Starry Night ~
Look up and discover your night sky
 
Noeleen talks about her love affair with the stars and the steps we can all take to discover more about our night sky. To find out more visit mystardustobservatory.com
 
Noeleen is president of the Southern Astronomical Society, having been a member for 22 years. She is an astrophotographer, astronomy and space educator, and is NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign member in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXnghax8c

Please go to my TEDx talk at the Helensvale Library Blog on the 2nd June 2017
​to read all about this wonderful event at:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-tedx-talk-at-helensvale-library-2nd-june-2017

I was invited by the lovely people from the Helensvale Library to give a TEDx talk on how I learnt all about the night sky as it may inspire other people to go outside and look up to discover there night sky…I hope it does!
Happy Stargazing :-)
​
~ Starry Starry Night ~
Look up and discover your night sky

The theme of the event was called ‘Make It’ and there were seven wonderful presenters who volunteered there time and story’s to make people think about the topics that everyone was so passionate about.
 
I must say that I have given thousands of talks, but this one was completely different because I had to give a bit of my personal experiences for the story, which is something that I don’t usually do, but I did enjoy sharing those special moments :-)
 
I also discovered that a TED talk is not a talk where you teach, its purpose is to bring one really great idea to the audience that may help, challenge or created a desire for somebody to try something new in there lives, and to present it all in under 18minutes or less!!!
 
Also, it’s quite scary standing on that red circle, but the whole experience was just so exciting and fun. I would like to thank all the incredible people who helped out on the night, especially Karen Gunnarsson and Dani Watson the organizers of this wonderful TEDx event, for making the evening such a wonderful success for everyone that attended. I will post the link to the video here as soon as it’s ready...

​The whole event was just awesome!!

Please find the YouTube link to my TEDx talk below and I hope you feel inspired to go out outside in your garden, Look up and discover your night sky :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXnghax8c

Link to article at:
http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/entertainment/gold-coast-tedx-talk-to-see-karl-smith-aka-the-lyrical-swap-rapping-for-public-speaking/news-story/765c74f4d7646fb2ffda6ae94eca16cd

In the early hours of yesterday morning (7th April) Comet 252P/Linear was still making its way through the constellation of Ophiuchus and came close to the globular star cluster M14. You can also see to the top of the image the other very faint globular star cluster NGC 6366, that lies 3 degrees southwest of M14.
 
There is also a wide field image where you can just make out the green colour of the comet close by the rich star fields of our Milky Way galaxy. The planets Mars and Saturn also make a lovely acute triangle with the brilliant star Antares that’s in Scorpius…so there’s a lot going on in this part of the sky at the moment :-)
 
Images taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 70-200 mm lens set 200mm; exposure times were 45 seconds and ISO 400 at F2.8. Wide Field image taken with a 17-85mm lens at 17mm, exposure time was one and a half minutes at F5.6 and ISO 2000.
 
Processing Picture:
There were multiple images with dark frames stacked in DSS (Free software, Deep Sky Stacker) and processed in Photoshop… the reason for doing this is to reduce any noise (from the camera) in the pictures so you can bring out some more of the detail.
 

~ You can just make out the green colour of Comet 252P/Linear to the left in my image ~

​In the early hours of yesterday morning (3rd April) Comet 252P/Linear was making it’s way through the faint stars in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
 
This pretty green comet formed a lovely triangle in the sky with the two very faint globular star clusters called NGC 6399 and NGC 6402 (M14), which are only 3 degrees apart in the night sky.
 
From my image, you’ll see the path that the comet will travel as it makes its way close by M14 in the early hours of the morning on the 6th and 7th April…I hope the skies stay clear so I can capture it :-)
 
Images taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 70-200 mm lens set 200mm; exposure time was 15 seconds and ISO 2000 at F3.5, 12 images were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.

​In the early hours of this morning (1st April) Comet 252P/Linear was blazing through the faint stars of Serpens Cauda (The tail of the Serpent) and heading for the constellation of Ophiuchus.
 
The last quarter Moon again made the sky very light but with perseverance I found the comet by its pretty green colour among the stars :-)
 
Images taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400 mm lens set 250mm; exposure time was 10 seconds and ISO 2000, 10 images were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.

​In the early hours of this morning I knew that Comet 252P/Linear would be near the bright star Shaula, which in the sting of Scorpius. Visually I could not see the comet at all, not even with binoculars, as the Moon was just too bright! I also had quite a lot of high cirrus cloud, so I’m very surprised I was even able to captured it at all…
 
The images are only very short exposures, but they do show where the comet was in the sky on the 26th March, and you can still make out the lovely bright green colour of its gases. The green colour is due to the vaporizing gas, diatomic carbon (C2) that is being emitted by the comets nucleus caused by the heat from the Sun.
 
The marked image is of the full constellation of Scorpius with the planets Mars and Saturn making a nice triangular pattern with Antares. Comet 252P/Linear is also faintly on show in the tail…you can just make out the green colour (If you look very closely)
 
The first image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens that was set at 100mm, exposures were 2 seconds. There were 8 images stacked in DSS and processed in PS. The wide field image is with the same camera and a Tokina 11-16mm lens set at 13mm with a 10 second exposure and ISO500, it’s just a single image.

Look how light the sky is because of the light of a large waning gibbous Moon!!!

Comet ISON was never favoured for viewers in the Southern Hemisphere because with the summer season upon us the dawn sky was just too light. But that did not stop me from trying to get some pictures :-)

My first try was on the new Moon weekend in early October when Comet ISON was still a long way away from Earth but at it’s closest distance to Mars on its journey through the Solar System. Try as I might, I just could not see it visually with either my 80mm refractor or 10x50 binoculars on the morning of the 6th October. It was indeed very faint and with the sky becoming light with every passing minute there was no time to waste, if I wanted to get an image.

So I decided to just get on with it and shoot off a few 3 minutes shots in the general area and see what I got…on my last image I managed to capture the comet just near the edge of the frame…then the sky became just too light to take any more pictures, but I did get one shot…and that’s the main thing!! 

Comet ISON image taken with a Meade ED80 refractor telescope tracking on top of larger telescope. 
(Just one 3 minute exposure in very light sky).   

For the next month, even though I got up many mornings to view the comet, it was either too cloudy or the sky was just too light. But on the morning of the 19th November it all got the better of me after seeing many images on spaceweather.com and I decided to take some really short shots (6 seconds) to see if I could just get something…. and YES, in the bright light of the dawn, there is was… not far away from the star Regulus in Leo.

It’s definitely not an image that will set the world on fire…but at least I got my own image of comet ISON before its fatal encounter with the Sun…and I’m very happy about that :-)

Comet ISON image taken in a very light predawn sky (20x6 second images) with Canon 7D and 17-85mm lens, stacked in DSS.    

You can find out all the latest information on Comet ISON at NASA's Comet ISON web pages below:
http://www.isoncampaign.org/
http://www.nasa.gov/ison/

Comet McNaught was also a sungrazing comet but it survived its close encounter with the Sun and spectacularly headed back out through the Solar System in early 2007. The comet was at perihelion on the 12th January 2007 and everyone was so excited to see what it would look like as it headed away from the Sun.

Because of the cloudy weather that was all over Australia, nobody had managed to see the comet at post perihelion and it was extremely frustrating for all us astronomers!!! 

Then on the evening of the 18th January just after sunset, I walked out my front door at home and just could not believe my eyes…there was Comet McNaught in all its glory…”Wow” that’s all I could say as I rushed to grab my camera and tripod….

Comet McNaught image taken at 7.40pm on the 18th January 2007 with Canon 350D and 70-300mm lens set at 300mm. exposure 2.5 seconds, f5.6 & ISO 800. 
(Just one shot)

On the following day (19th January 2007) my husband and I headed out to my dark observing site at Leyburn but decided to stay the night at Toowoomba to find a clear and secluded site just outside of town to see if we could view the comet after sunset. I set up my camera and tripod and we waited for the sun to go down…what came next was…JUST Astounding!!!

For a moment we both just looked at this incredible scene before our eyes…the comets tail was just unbelievable as it spread right across the horizon and feathered away and down into the horizon…it was just huge, and I needed to use my widest camera lens just to fit in all in the frame…it was just spectacular and so awesome!!!






Photo taken with my Canon 350D and 70-300mm lens set at 75mm at 7.57pm on the 19th January 2007, 20 second exposure at f4, ISO 400.

NASA’s APOD for the 1st February 2007 explains the science behind Comet McNaught’s remarkable tail at: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070201.html

The next day (20th January 2007) I meet my friends and fellow members of SAS on the observing field at Leyburn and there was great excitement about the comet, we set out to find a high place to observe the comet that evening. We found an area on top of a hill in a local vineyard and from there we all witnessed this amazing comet for a second night. It began to show itself just after sunset…that’s how bright Comet McNaught was in the sky…

Please see some images that I took of my friends and fellow members from our astronomy club on the Gold Coast called the Southern Astronomical Society (SAS)on the 20th January 2007. When we arrived on top of the hill we were all very very excited and just sprung out of our cars to set up…then it was all on to see who would be the first to spot the comet :-)

‘Wow’ what an awesome display Comet McNaught put on for us that night…. just stunning!!!

If Comet ISON had survived its close encounter with the Sun, it may have indeed put on an amazing display just like Comet McNaught…but stay tuned, maybe Comet Lovejoy has a big surprise for us all......

Footnote: On the 15th December I posted some of these images on spaceweather.com in remembrance of this superb comet at: http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=91464