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.

I’m just going to put it out there but when the full Moon was rising the other night with pretty coloured clouds surrounding its bright disc, it really looked like it was doing a Moondance. I know this home isolation due to the Coronavirus is getting a bit much for all of us but I’m hoping this may put a smile on your face :-)
 
I’ve also included another image below that is quite normal with the bright Moonlight producing colours from ice crystals in the clouds. 

The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod at numerous settings.

~ Venus in Twilight ~
 
The sky was just stunning this evening at 6.20pm with brilliant Venus now above the Pleiades star cluster (M45) low in the western sky and to add to the spectacular event were the pretty colours of a purple pink twilight sky…it was just magic!
 
(The purple pink colours in these two images was very real and pretty)

I was able to capture some images using my camera set-up attached to my tracking HEQ5 mount, but when the planet went further down behind the fence I had to attached my camera to a camera tripod
and go outside to the front lawn.

The next set of images that I took did not have any purple hue in them but the sky was still quite light as I watched the Pleiades Star Cluster and Venus disappeared behind the trees and the cosmic show was over…

This now concludes the Venus, Pleiades conjunction of 2020
And the event will not happen again for another eight years in 2028!
 
What a wonderful celestial show it was :-)
 
My images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens.
With the first two images, the camera was tracking on a HEQ Pro5 mount, the close up image was taken at 6.20pm, exposure time was 25 seconds and ISO200, and 5 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.
 
The second image was a wide field with just one single shot taken at 6.35pm, 2 second exposure and ISO1600.
 
The final image was taken outside on my front lawn at 6.38pm with the camera on a tripod, I shot off nine 1-second images, which were stacked in Registack6 and processed in PS CS4.

Brilliant Venus glided in front of the stars in the Pleiades star cluster this evening and it looked absolutely beautiful, this is quite a rare event and only happens every 8 years. We had some high level cloud but it held out long enough for me to capture some images :-)
 
My mage was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens @300mm; the exposure time was 25 seconds and ISO 250. The full sky image was taken with a Canon GX7 Mark 11 camera outside on my front lawn where I could see the whole western sky under a bright street light!

In these difficult times with the Corona virus you just have to look for the beauty in all things, while looking at the water yesterday morning I saw all these beautiful little Suns being reflected in the water and it made me smile at how beautiful they were :-)
 
They are called Sun glitters and I took the image with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens. I had to do a very fast exposure to capture the Sun sparkle at 1/2000th second and set the aperture at F29, ISO640.
 
I’m always looking out on how the Sun is interplaying around me and if I find any more wonderful things I’ll share them with you…please keep safe and happy…
 
TO find out more about this phenomenon please go to a couple of websites:
https://psl.noaa.gov/outreach/education/pdf/glitter.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_glitter