Just one day after the UAE ‘Hope Probe’ went into orbit about Mars the Chinese spacecraft named ‘Tianwen -1’ translated as ‘Heavenly Questions’ has gone into the Martian orbit about the planet. It includes and orbiter, lander and a Mars rover.
 
To read more about China’s Mars mission in English please go to:
http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html
To read more about China’s Mars mission in Chinese please go to:
http://www.cnsa.gov.cn
 
To read see and read all about the first image taken by the spacecraft please go to:
http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/n6465652/n6465653/c6811227/content.html
 
More information on the mission at:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-1
 
Now for something different an excellent podcast from South China Morning Post:
China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission and its fast-growing space industry
 
SCMP journalist Nadeem Shad speaks with freelance space journalist and China space industry expert Andrew Jones about the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars, and the audacious plan to deliver a vehicle to the Martian surface. Hear how the other missions being sent by NASA and the United Arab Emirates are not a new 'space race', and how it might just take FBI permission to allow an American spacecraft to communicate with a Chinese one.
 
Hear also why 2020 was one of the busiest years in China's history of space travel - and how it is embracing the commercial market to private companies keen to launch vehicles into space. #scmppodcasts​

On the 9th February the UAE Hope Martian Probe entered into a Mars orbit Insertion and is now safely orbiting the red planet after a seven-month journey from Earth.
 
This is an incredible achievement for such a small country and only the fifth country to have done so, the Hope Probe will study the Martian atmosphere and climate and in the future the UAE Space Agency plan to make a Mars human settlement on the planet.
 
To find more about the mission please go to the following links:
https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae
 
To follow the live tracks of the Hope Probe go to:
https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/track-the-hope-probe-live/

This is the first cloud free day we’ve had here in Queensland since the New Year started, and the solar surface is completely spotless…here’s hoping some solar action starts up again soon,
​as I’m waiting for some excitement to happen :-)
 
Image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a 18-400mm lens set at 400mm with a 2x teleconverter making a focal length of 1280mm. A glass solar filter was attached to the lens for safe imaging of Sun. Twelve images were stacked in RegiStax6 with exposure times of 1/500th second and ISO100.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This 4K visualization shows the Moon's phase and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2021, as viewed from the Southern Hemisphere. Each frame represents one hour. In addition, this visualization shows the Moon's orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, and distance from the Earth at true scale. Craters near the terminator are labeled, as are Apollo landing sites, maria, and other albedo features in sunlight.
 
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Data visualization by Ernie Wright (USRA) Producer & Editor - David Ladd (USRA)
 
Music Provided by Universal Production Music: "Fly To The Moon" - Thomas Edward Sheppard
 
This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4875​

If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer​
​

This is the way we see the Moon in the Southern Hemisphere here in Australia
Yes, it’s upside down :-o 
Now isn’t that a surprise to people who live in the Northern Hemisphere :-)
 
I’ve marked a lot of the main features on the surface for you to find and explore with your binoculars or telescope Enjoy and have fun!

ABC Science 1st January 2020
By: Genelle Weule

~ Stars, galaxies, dust clouds and Uranus: take a tour of the January night sky ~
​
Genelle Weule (Science writer for ABC) has written another excellent article on the wonderful objects you can see in the January sky, but don’t worry if you don’t catch them in January as they will still be on show for the next couple of months as they head down into the western sky.
 
I was very happy to have been asked to contribute my images again for this article; you will also see some beautiful images in the article from my fellow SAS astro friend Dylan O’Donnell.
 
Dylan’s YouTube Channel is at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgOf4wBnoGg8WHHHr_h4otQ
 
So hop off your comfortable lounge, grab a star chart, binoculars or telescope and have a lot of fun exploring the night sky in your own garden with family and friends :-)
 
Other helpful tools to help find your way around the night are a FREE app called ‘Star Chart’ at: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/star-chart/id345542655

Or download or print a FREE sky chart at Skymaps.com at:
 http://www.skymaps.com
*If you’re in Australia make sure you download the star chart for the Southern Hemisphere*

I looked up into the sky and saw this pretty partial Sun halo, all day long there were beautiful high wispy cirrus clouds over the sky and at some stage I was sure a halo would appear…and it did :-)
 
Image taken on the 28th December 2020 with a Canon G7X Mark11 on manual focus and F11 aperture using ISO125.

Keep looking up…you never know what you’ll find!

This is the first time our sky has been clear since the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the 21st December and you can see quite clearly how far both planets have now moved apart from one another on the ecliptic.
 
If you are a lover of the night sky then this was an extremely wonderful event to have witnessed, but to the naked eye for most people I think they were a little disappointed. When I explained how big these planets were and to see them just about on top of one another in our line of sight, then I think they understood that this was quite an awesome astronomical event!
 
Again I used the house across the road with all its pretty Christmas lights flashing as the foreground for my pictures of this special planetary event so I’ll never forget that it happened at Christmas-time 2020 :-)
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the first image was an exposure of 2 seconds and ISO200, the second image was zoomed in to 400mm with an exposure of 1 second and ISO 640 and the image is cropped.

We have had so much cloud and rain for over two weeks now, but last night the cloud cleared just long enough to view this great conjunction between the two largest planets in our Solar System...Woohoo, I was so excited!
 
To the naked eye the planets looked like one point of light, but as soon as you magnified the view with a camera lens you could just make out the tiny separation between them.
 
I again chose my favourite house across the road to take the wide field image of the planets above their home, because it looked so pretty with all there Christmas lights on display, the children who live there will be so excited when I show them these pictures :-)
 
It would have been wonderful to have captured the event with my telescope, but it was not to be, I just had to make do with running up and down the street to find a good place to take pictures and dodging all the trees, house roofs and clouds…and I did it :-))
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the first image was an exposure of 3.2 seconds and ISO400. With the second image I attached a 2x convertor to make a focal length of 1280mm with an exposure of 0.6 second and ISO1600 the image is cropped.

It’s now the beginning of summer here in Australia and the sky is still very light in the evening to at least 7.30pm. You can clearly see that the two largest planets in our solar system are now getting closer and closer together in the western sky.
 
Our neighbours across the road have just put up all there outside Christmas lights and I thought it would be a lovely idea to capture this wonderful event and make a picture with the heavenly lights also above there house…. and I did it :-)
 
In the second image below, I moved away to under the trees, the sky was so clear you could even see the tiny pinpoint lights of Jupiter’s Moon beside the planet!
 
My images taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, exposure time for the first image was 1.6 seconds and ISO400. The second image was using the same camera setup with an exposure time of 4 seconds and ISO 500.
 
To read more about this once in 20-year event when Jupiter and Saturn will be just about on top on one another on the 21st December 2020 (As viewed from our line of sight here on Earth).
Please find some links to a couple of excellent articles below:
 
Jupiter and Saturn come together in a 'once in a lifetime' show in the December sky
ABC Science by Genelle Weule
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-11-27/jupiter-and-saturn-in-a-once-in-a-lifetime-grand-conjunction/12895088?nw=0
 
If you haven’t seen Jupiter and Saturn, you’re missing something!
Posted by Deborah Byrd and Bruce McClure:
https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020
 
If you would like some help on taking some images please go to NASA’s link at:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1615/how-to-photograph-the-conjunction-of-saturn-and-jupiter/
 
Please enjoy this wonderful event :-)

I was able to take some more images of this wonderful huge Sunspot late yesterday afternoon and this time I used my little planetary ZWO camera, which showed so much more detail around the active area than the DSLR images that I took on the 26th November 2020.
 
We are having a heat wave here at the moment so it’s very very hot outside taking pictures of the Sun…but it’s worth it :-)
 
Images were taken on the 28th November, with a 127mm refractor telescope fitted with a glass solar filter and using a ZWO 120 MC-S camera. The camera was at prime focus for the first image, and then I attached a 3x Barlow lens for the higher magnification images. AVI movie files were captured with 2500 frames and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.