The brilliant planet Venus is still very prominent in our western sky at twilight but it’s now shimmering all the colours of the rainbow as its light is being refracted through particles in our Earths atmosphere.
 
While trying to take this image with a planetary camera it was wobbling all over the place and scintillating with colour. I managed to get a 2-minute AVI movie still enough to stack for this image to show some of the pretty colours…but I’ll definitely be keeping all the other videos of Venus as the planet looked so fascinating!
 
Images were taken with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope at prime focus and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour camera with a 3x Barlow attached. AVI movie files were captured and stacked and processed in RegiStax6 and PS CS4.

It’s quite amazing to see the difference in size of Venus as it goes from a smaller first quarter Venus (like our Moon) at greatest elongation from the Sun, to a huge crescent phase which is now on show low in the western sky, this is the first time I’ve been able to capture this phenomenon with Venus :-)
 
When Venus is at a small crescent phase like now, it’s actually closer to Earth in its orbit and that is why it’s so much larger as seen through the eyepiece of the telescope. Venus is also an inferior planet and is inside of the Earths orbit, so you will never see Venus crossing the night-time sky like Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
 
Venus stays quite close to the Sun on the ecliptic and sometimes is the brightness object in the night sky. It’s also known as the morning or evening star because of its brightness and beauty.
 
If you would like to know more about Venus please go to NASA’s website at:
https://www.nasa.gov/venus
 
Information on my images: I used the same equipment and camera settings for all of the pictures and they are all to scale in relation to size. The montage of images were taken on the 12th August, 10th September and 2nd October 2018 with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour camera with a 3x Barlow attached. AVI movie files were captured and then processed in RegiStax6 and PS CS4.

After taking many images of the planets over the last couple of months with this amazing little ZWO camera, I decided to slew over to the 8 day old Moon and see how it went along the terminator line…and I must say I was blown away by the detail on the surface of the Moon!
 
I didn’t want to change any of the settings or adaptors on the telescope as I was just filling in time until Mars had gone over the zenith. My telescope when in Alt/Az mode does not like pointing straight up into the sky, it seems to spin on its base and not track properly, but when it’s in equatorial mode I have not trouble at all. (I use a 10inch LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope).
 
 The first image shows what is known as the big three craters, Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus & Arzachel with the other large crater Albategnius to the right of Ptolemaeus. To get some prospective on how large some of these craters are Ptolemaeus is an incredible 153 km in diameter and 2400m high!
 
The second image shows some stunning detail of the lunar mountain range called Montes Alpes and the 3600 m high Mons Blanc (Mt Blanc) with the 180km Alpine Valley running through it.
​Also on show is the extremely bright mountain peak called Mons Piton (Mt Piton) at 2250 m high on the smooth Maria called Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
 
The large flooded crater (to the right) is called Cassini and is 57 km in diameter and has two crater inside called Cassini A and B.
 
With this phase of the Moon we are seeing sunrise on the terminator line (day/night horizon) and everything on the sunlit side is being thrown into sharp detail. (Images taken last quarter Moon on the 18th September 2018)
​
AVI movies were captured with about 3000 frames as the seeing wasn’t great, there was also some light cloud in the sky so the surface of the Moon was a bit wobbly…but RegiStack6 did great in stacking the images…I’m very happy with this little camera for planetary imaging :-)

The night sky here in Australia at the moment is a stargazers delight with the brilliant planets Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars all beautifully displayed across the night sky. A few nights ago I got one of those very rare moments when the seeing went ever so calm and I managed to get some outstanding images of Saturn high up at the zenith :-)
 
I then overexposed the disc of Saturn to see if I could capture any of the moons, and to my delight there they were five of them, the three moons in the shape of a triangle were Enceladus, Tethys and Dione, the two moons further out were Rhea and Titan.
 
The second image is a composite because I had to use two different exposure times, a shorter one to capture the body of Saturn, and a longer exposure time to capture the faint moons of the planet.
 
Images were taken with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour CCD camera with a 3x Barlow attached. AVI movie files were captured and then processed in RegiStax6 and PS CS4.

My first time I've ever captured some of the moons of Saturn, they are Enceladus, Tethys and Dione, with Rhea and Titan further away from the planet.

The golden sunset yesterday afternoon on North Stradbroke Island (Minjerribab) was just so beautiful. As the tide was coming in on the beach at Adder Point I was able to capture a pretty glitter path to the Sun, where you can see hundreds of little Suns reflected in the waves and on the water.
 
There are many ways to enjoy and capture our amazing Star the Sun :-)
 
Image was taken on the 27th August 2018 with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 70mm and F11, the exposure time was 1/500th of a second and ISO 100.

To find out more about this beautiful island and its culture please go to the Queensland Governments website at:
https://www.npsr.qld.gov.au/parks/naree-budjong-djara/culture.html

The atmosphere on the dusty planet Mars is starting to clear up a bit as you can see from a couple of my images taken between the 11th and the 22nd of August.  But unfortunately our Earth is now racing away from the planet and Mars will just become smaller and smaller as viewed through the telescope.

I have been so lucky to have had over three weeks of fine weather to take pictures and observe Mars and even though a dust storm encircled the whole planet, I was at least able to capture some surface features on the planet…and I’m very happy about that :-)
​
These montages of images were taken between the 11th and the 22nd August 2018 with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour camera with a 3x Barlow attached. AVI movie files were captured and then processed in RegiStax6 and PS CS4.

​​It’s the 12th of August and I’m getting ready to take some more images of Mars and the other planets with my Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour CCD camera and just look how bright Mars is in the eastern sky…its just brilliant! Perhaps it because of the global dust storm and all the dust particles are being reflected back to us here on Earth!
 
I don’t have a lot of viewing area here at home with just a small gap between our house and the house next door.  But the ecliptic is right in the middle of this gap, so I’m so happy to have been able to take so many pictures of the planets during this fantastic opposition of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus :-)

I just love this little ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour CCD camera, it does an amazing job of capturing detail on the surface of the planets and I would recommend it to anybody wishing to take planetary images.

I only just managed to capture the occultation of Ganymede at the edge of Jupiter before it disappeared on the evening of the 11th August; another moon called Europa was also fast approaching the planet for another disappearing act…Jupiter is always such a surprise to observe as you never know what your going to see!
 
Jupiter’s four Galilean moons are always doing a moon dance around its parent planet, so there will be nights when you will see all four of the moons strung out along Jupiter’s ecliptic in more or less a straight line. Sometimes, you will see a moon just pop into view or disappear like my photo above when it goes behind Jupiter. And sometimes you will see a dark shadow crossing the surface of the planet when a moon is transiting or crossing in front of the surface of the planet…it’s the Suns light, which causes the shadow of the moon to fall on the surface of Jupiter’s.
 
If you want to keep track of where Jupiter moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) are when observing the planet then you’ll find this information in a couple of places.
 
The first in written form in the Australian publication called Astronomy 2018, which is an astronomer’s bible for the night sky and you can buy it at any astronomy shop or bookstore. The next is in your country’s current astronomy and space magazine.
 
But my favourite place, if you have a smart phone or iPad is a FREE App called Gas Giants, which shows you in the field exactly what’s happening with the Galilean system while viewing the planet through your telescope, it can be found in the App store at:
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/gas-giants/id397831483?mt=8
 
My image was taken on the 11th August 2018 with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour CCD camera with a 3x Barlow attached. Its just one AVI movie file (2500 frames) stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

~ Night of the Planets ~
 
This past month has been all about the planets; on show in the night sky have been Mercury low down on the western horizon, then the pretty quarter phase of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, then dusty Mars all on view right across the ecliptic.
 
I set up my 10inch Meade LX200 Schmidt-cassegrain telescope here at home on the 31st July in the hope of capturing as much detail on the surface of Mars over the coming weeks and because of the extremely fine weather that we’ve had that’s where the telescope has been ever since. (I’ve made sure that the telescope has been covered up and protected)
 
Unfortunately Mars has had that huge dust storm on the surface so not much detail has been observed which is such a shame, because this years very close opposition was going to be just spectacular with Mars at only 58 million kilometres away from Earth.
 
So while out taking pictures of Mars I also had fun capturing all the other planets too, which I’ve put together in this montage of images that were all taken on the night of the 9th August 2018. Please note, that all the planets are to scale in size, just look at how huge Mars is as compared with the body of Saturn…now that’s amazing!
 
All images were taken with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S colour CCD camera with a 3x Barlow attached. AVI movie files were captured and then processed in RegiStax6 and PS CS4. 

There had been quite a lot of cirrocumulus cloud mixed with high cirrus clouds crossing the sky today which always makes me keep an eye out for atmospheric phenomena of any kind…especially Sundogs and solar halo’s.
 
But today I got a real treat; not only was there a lovely Sundog in the sky, there were also these unusual soft pastel streaks of thin coloured cloud between thicker layers of clouds, they were very pretty and striking in colour.
 
The colours are caused by the light from the Sun being diffracted out in the sky by the tiny ice crystals in the thin cirrus cloud which creates this rainbow like effect…it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it spread out so far across the sky like this :-)
 
If you would like to read more about these pretty iridescent clouds please go to Les Cowley’s excellent Atmospheric Optics website at: https://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/irid1.htm
 
Images were taken on the 7th August 2018 with just my point and shot Canon G15 camera that I always keep in my handbag; the camera was set on manual focus.