I’ve tried and tried nearly every night (like everyone else) to capture some detail on the surface of Mars, and this is the best that I’ve been able to get with my 10inch telescope.
 
Not only have we had to contend with our own weather here on Earth of cloud, smoke and haze, but ironically also this huge dust storm that has encircled the whole planet during this very close opposition…but it’s starting to clear and just perhaps we may be rewarded with some spectacular views before our Earth races away from the planet,
​I’ll keep trying :-)
 
This montage of images were taken between the 31st July and the 5th August 2018 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.

The planet Mars has had a global dust storm raging on its surface since the beginning of June, now it looks like its finally clearing a little for us to view its surface…Yay!

I set up my telescope tonight (31st July 2018) and took lots of images of Mars, it’s now nearly 3.30am and I thought I would just post these images before going to bed.
 
I also took some beautiful images of Jupiter and Saturn, which I’ll post onto my blog in the next couple of days :-)
 
Image was 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.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope photographed Mars on July 18, near its closest approach to Earth since 2003. The planet was observed near opposition, when the Sun, Earth and Mars are lined up, with Earth sitting in between the Sun and Mars. This proximity gives the Red Planet its brightest appearance in the night sky since the 2003 opposition.
It’s springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere, where a dust storm erupted and ballooned into a global event that is now blanketing the entire planet. Even so, several distinctive features can be identified.
 
Please go to the Hubble website to read more of the story at:
Hubble https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2018/mars-opposition-201

NASA Mars Exploration Rover Status Report
Updated at 2:25 p.m. PDT on July 26, 2018
It's the beginning of the end for the planet-encircling dust storm on Mars. But it could still be weeks, or even months, before skies are clear enough for NASA's Opportunity rover to recharge its batteries and phone home.
​The last signal received from the rover was on June 10.
​
Continue reading the story at:
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8348/opportunity-hunkers-down-during-dust-storm/

Released on the August 20, 2015
2015 marks 50 years of successful NASA missions to Mars starting with Mariner 4 in 1965. Since then, a total of 15 robotic missions led by various NASA centers have laid the groundwork for future human missions to the Red Planet. The journey to Mars continues with additional robotic missions planned for 2016 and 2020, and human missions in the 2030s.

The Moon was a beautiful golden colour as it rose in the evening sky last night, we have a lot of swans on our lake at the moment and they were gliding past in the glitter path created by the moonlight. I had to wait quite a while for the right moment to capture one of them fully in the moonlit path…and I got it :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 77mm, ISO 400 and exposure time 1/6th of a second. I took another corresponding image at a quicker exposure of 1/30th second because the moons surface was so bright, and then just blended the moons surface only into the picture.

This was the beautiful view on our waterway just after sunset this evening with the Moon glitter on the water and Mars the only other bright light other than the full Moon in the eastern sky; a swan passing by on the water just completed the pretty picture :-)
 
My photos were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens.
 
We will see the first part of the lunar eclipse here on the east coast of Queensland early in the morning (28th July) but it does not begin (U1) until 4.24am with totality beginning at 5.30am. By the time totality ends, the eclipsed Moon will have set. At least we’ll see the first half of the eclipse…that is, if the clouds don’t spoil the show!

You will have to have a very clear low western horizon to catch this one if you live in South East Queensland, because the Moon sets in the west at 6.36am and maximum eclipse (Totality) is at 6.22am,
​this will be neatly at the same time as the sunrise.
 
But saying that, you’ll still enjoy seeing the first half of the eclipse, which begin at 4.24am, and if the horizon is still clear for you lunar totality will start at 5.30am, it might look very pretty with the dawn colours and the red planet Mars very close by the Moon.
 
If you have the publication Astronomy 2018, you’ll find all the times for the other states in Australia on page 92.
Good Luck everyone :-)

Images from a previous Total Eclipse of the Moon as seen from the Gold Coast in QLD Australia :-)

I will post some images soon of this one if the sky is clear and I can see the eclipse above the houses and trees which are across the road from me here on the Gold Coast!

I’m so excited because one of my beautiful aurora images titled ‘The Northern Lights in the Arctic Night’ has been chosen as a finalist in this years CWAS David Malin Awards astrophoto competition in the Nightscapes section, Wow, that's amazing :-)
 
What happens now is during the CWAS astrofest conference on the weekend of the 14th & 15th July, David Malin will introduce us all and our images and an overall winner will be announced in each section, to win a monetary voucher kindly donated by Canon Australia, along with lovely plaques and certificates.
 
But the most exciting thing about the whole competition is that all of our beautiful images will be professionally printed and framed to be display at the visitors centre at CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescopes in NSW for a whole year.
 
Then, another set of the images will tour the country and go to other observatories and museums, so many many people will see our images and wonder at the beauty of the night sky…how very exciting is all that!
 
Please go to the links below to see my Aurora image and also all the other finalist chosen this year, I’ll let you know soon how I went…. Noeleen :-)
​
https://www.facebook.com/CWASDMA/
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/astrofest/DMA/2018_shortlist/
https://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au

What a beautiful view it was last night when the Moon rose from behind the clouds with Mars shinning brilliantly above, to add to the beauty it was all reflected in the lake :-)
 
My images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod. The first image was set at 23mm with a 4 second exposure and ISO400. The second image was a 2.5 second exposure with the lens set at 70mm and ISO 400.

I drove out of my garage today and looked up in the sky and saw this stunning solar halo from my driveway…that was it, I jumped out of the car and starting taking photos, you can also see part of another circle up in the top of the corners of the image, I’m not sure if that is the 46 degree circle?
 
That perfect circle around the Sun is created by special sized ice crystals that refract the suns lights and is 22 degrees away from the Sun.
 
I kept an eye on the sky all day and saw sundogs and my first circumzenithal arc, I have never seen one before so I was very excited, it only lasted a few minutes then it was gone…but what a thrill it was to see!

~ My first view ever of a circumzenithal arc, it's associated with the 46 degree circle around th Sun ~

A circumzenithal arc (CZA) is like an upside-down rainbow, it’s another optical phenomenon belonging to the family of halos and that is why you may see one when there's a halo in the sky. They are associated with the super huge 46 degree circle that surround the Sun or Moon when high cirrus or cirrostratus clouds are in the sky like there was today.

If you would like to know more about these objects please go to Les Cowley’s excellent AOptics website at:

https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon)

These images were taken on the 30th June 2018 with just a Canon G15 point and shoot camera that I always have in my handbag and I used manual focus and the auto settings in the camera.

I had some fun today taking these images of the Sun and Moon with just my camera and lens set up.
I used a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens plus a 2x telecoverter with a glass solar filter safely attached to the front of the lens, this made for a focal length of 1280mm, the camera was attached to a tracking HEQ5 mount.
 
I already had the tracking mount setup when I took some image earlier in the day with my solar telescope, and I thought…Hmmm, why not put my camera on the mount and track the sky, all I did was take the adapter bracket off the bottom of the Lunt solar scope and attached to the bottom of the Canon 70D camera and presto,
​I was on my way :-)
 
You can just make out the sunspot group AR2715 on the surface of the Sun and the Moon is in a waxing gibbous phase, during the evening I used the same lens at 18mm and took a wide field photo of Jupiter above the Moon with the constellation of Scorpius rising in the east…by this time the sky was very light from the Moon, but the scene looked very pretty in the night sky.
 
So how did I take the pictures, for both the Sun and the Moon images I did a burst of 20 images then stacked them in RegiStax6 and lightly processed them in PS CS4. The exposures for both objects is very short, the Sun 1/500th second and the Moon 1/250th second and ISO100 or ISO200.

These photos do really show that you can get some great astrophotography images even if you don’t have an expensive telescope. You can still take really good shots of both the Sun and Moon with just an ordinary camera tripod, but having a tracking mount like the one mentioned above does make it so much easier to take images.

The Sun has been so quite visually for a long now, so when a sunspot emerges everyone is excited, unfortunately its been cloudy here so this is the first time I’ve been able to get the solar scope out to take some pictures, to add to this, we have a bit of smoke in the sky from some burning off, so the sky’s a bit hazy…
 
I was hoping to catch a solar prominence from AR2713 as it hit the western limb of the Sun, but that did not happen and the larger sunspot group AR2715 seems to be getting smaller. While taking this image AR2715 brightened slightly and if you look closely at the shape of the sunspot you can see a pretty heart shape…that heart shape sunspot is larger than our planet Earth!
 
Image taken a with a H-alpha Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC-S CCD camera at prime focus, AVI file stacked in RegisStax6 and processed in PS CS4 :-)