I was on my way home when I saw these amazing coloured iridescent clouds in the sky and just had to stop the car to take some photos.
 
These clouds were very dramatic with some remarkable shapes, including one that looked like it was breaking free to fly across the sky…with some of our home restrictions being lifted now from COVID-19 that’s exactly the way I’m feeling too :-)
 
Cloud iridescence is an optical phenomenon caused by sunlight scattering through the small ice crystals in the clouds; you can also see the Sun in both of the images that is the source of this beautiful display.
 
The images were taken with a Canon G7X Mark11 camera on manual focus, both with ISO125 and exposures of 1/1250th second & 1/1000th second.

The rising Moon looked so beautiful last night as its golden light reflected on the water, it was just one day past full Moon and the Moons colour was just stunning.
 
I tried to capture what it really looked like with the camera, but that was just impossible because of the two different exposures needed to catch the entire scene.
 
So what I’ve done is a composite image of two images:
Using a Canon 70D camera with an 18-400mm lens on a tripod I did two different exposure settings with the Moon in the same position in the image. I took one image with a 2 second exposure, ISO 500 and lens set at 89mm. Then I took the second image at a shorter exposure of 1/30th second with ISO 160 and lens set at 89mm.
 
Both images were then opened in Photoshop; with the brighter image of the Moon I selected just the lunar disc then copied and pasted it into the longer exposure image.
​I had to play around with it a bit…but I’m quite happy with the result :-)
 
For the beautiful ‘Golden Moon’ image I used the same camera setup and zoomed the lens to 400mm, the ISO 160 and 1/30th second exposure @f7.
 
The golden colour is due to aerosols in the earth’s atmosphere low on the horizon and you’ll also notice that the Moon is a little misshaped (squashed) also due to that atmospheric condition. 

After finding and taking images of Comet Swan in the lightening dawn sky, I then looked up above my head at the zenith saw the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars on the ecliptic and took some lovely images.
 
~ The beautiful twilight colours of the eastern dawn sky on 3rd May 2020 ~
 
When I looked back around at the dawn sky it just took my breath away with the beauty of all the colours on display. What made it even more remarkable was that I could still see some of the stars of Pegasus (The Winged Horse) and Cetus (Sea Monster) in the purple-pink coloured sky, just gorgeous!

I got up at 4am to find Comet Swan, but I could not locate it in the low eastern sky as the sky was extremely light and the stars in area were so faint. In the end I just pointed the camera in the direction and hoped for the best.
(I did use my planetarium Stellerium App but I could still not visually see it).
 
The first shot I did with my camera settings were just completely blown out because of the light sky, in the end I could only take up to a 8 second shot it was then that I knew there was no way I was going to catch any of the faint wispy tail.
 
But I did capture the comet, just a telltale greenish starlike dot, but that starlike dot is the Comet, so mission accomplished :-)
 
While taking the image a bright satellite flared and I captured it in three images, which I stacked, I have since found out it was the ESA Envisat Satellite and it’s a large satellite that’s now inactive.
(It was once an Earth observation satellite)

You will see that Comet Swan was in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster) and I have marked the other faint constellations in the area. 
 
I also pointed the cameras right up above my head and took a couple of images of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars on the ecliptic, then turned the camera back around to take some awesome pictures of the dawn coloured sky.
Pictures will be in my following blog...
 
Information on the images: The wide field image of Comet Swan and Envisat Satellite was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400 lens @18mm, ISO 3200 and 8 second exposure. Three images were stacked in DSS to capture satellite path, the satellite flared brightly when I first saw it for one second.

Some information about the (ESA) Envisat Satellite 
​(European Space Agency) http://www.esa.int

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Envisat

http://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Envisat/ESA_declares_end_of_mission_for_Envisat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envisat

It was a beautiful clear evening a few nights ago when I took these lovely images of the six-day-old Moon. On the terminator there were many wonderful objects to look, but I was so surprised to see so many Wrinkle Ridges on the surface of the Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis) and Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis).
 
I’m enjoying going back to the Moon and discovering it all over again while in this home isolation :-)
 
Images taken with a Meade 10inch LX200 Schmidt-Cassergrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera, AVI movies were captured with about 1200 frames each, then stacked in RegiStax6, and processed in PS CS4.

~ Brilliant Venus ~

Wow! Venus is so bright in the evening sky and it’s at its greatest illuminated extent, shinning brilliantly at -4.7 magnitude, it’s like a lighthouse beacon in the western sky…it’s just magnificent!
 
To find out more about the remarkable planet Venus go to NASA’s website at:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/in-depth/
 
For an in-depth scientific explanation of ‘Greatest Illuminated Extent please got to:

​Title: Illuminated Extent: A Telltale Measure of an Inferior Planet's Disk
Authors: Gingrich, M.
Journal: Journal of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, Vol. 42, p. 18-21
Bibliographic Code: 1999JALPO.42...18G
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1999JALPO..42...18G
 
My image was taken with 10inch Meade GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. An AVI movie was captured with 1400 frames, stacked in RegiStax6,
and processed in PS CS4. 

 The sky looked very pretty last evening with the new crescent Moon making a beautiful conjunction with the Hyades Star Cluster and Venus, which were both in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). 

​It made for a beautiful celestial alignment in the sky; because of the light cloud Venus also showed a lovely corona of coloured light surrounding the planet.
 
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm lens at 6.05pm not long after sunset, exposure time was 3.2seconds and ISO400.

Venus is now shining like a lighthouse beacon in the western sky at sunset
for anybody who takes the time to look up and marvel at the sight :-)
 
If you look at Venus right now through your telescope you’ll see that it’s light is being refracted and showing all these rainbow colours because of our Earths turbulent atmosphere. It’s called Scintillation and it’s making it very hard to capture some useful images as the planet is wobbling all over the place…but it does look very pretty.
You can remove this colour by processing but I’m leaving it here because this is what it really looks like in the eyepiece…you'll see that the other image has the colour removed.
 
I think this may be the last image of Venus taken through my telescope, as the planet is now so low it’s skimming the roof of the house next door.  Even my wide field pictures taken outside on the front lawn is showing the planet just above the house roofs across the road.
 
The crescent Venus was taken with 10inch Meade GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. An AVI movie was captured with 1200 frames, stacked in RegiStax6, and processed in PS CS4. (To remove the spectrum colours use the RGB align feature in RegiStax6)
 
Wide field image below of Orion, Hyades Star Cluster and Venus was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 18mm, nine images were captured and stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4. The exposure time was 3.2 seconds and ISO 1000.

The brilliant planet Venus is now extremely bright and is at a crescent phase, as it gets closer to us in its orbit about the Sun.
 
It is very interesting to view Venus through a telescope because it shows phases like our Moon. When it’s a gibbous phase the planet is further away and quite small in the eyepiece, now that it’s showing a crescent phase its much larger and brighter because the planet is closer to us here on Earth :-)
 
The image was taken with a 10inch Meade GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI movie file was captured with 1200 frames, which were stacked in RegiStax6, and processed in PS CS4.

~ Celestial Triangle ~
~ In the Constellation of Taurus (The Bull) ~
​On the 12th April 2020
  
The Pleiades star cluster is now very low in the sky and just above the rooftop of the house across the road; it’s quite hidden in the twilight colours of the evening sky. At the moment we are having some pretty pink and purple sunsets and these colours are showing up in all of my images,
​it’s probably due to some dust or smoke particles in the western sky.
 
Venus is making a lovely celestial triangular shape with the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters and the three objects are all in the constellation of Taurus.
 
The image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod, I took nine images which were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4, with exposure times of 1 second each, ISO 1600.
 
Below and a wider view of the western sky that includes the Orion constellation which is above the constellation of Taurus…the sky is very light because its only 6.30pm in the evening.