~ View of 1st Quarter Moon (7 day old) as seen from Southern & Northern Hemispheres on 31st August 2025 ~
 
It’s very interesting how people of the world see how the Moon rises in relation to where they are on the surface of the Earth. In Australia we are in the southern hemisphere so when the Moon rises we view the south of the Moon to the top and the north to the bottom.
 
The Moon also heads over to the northern sky during the night, where as in the northern hemisphere the Moon heads over to the southern sky; this always throws me when visiting the northern hemisphere as the Moon is also upside down, tricky isn’t it  ;-)
 
Don’t get me stared on the northern hemisphere constellation that we share; yes they are also upside down here in Australia, so if you are visiting us here down under be in for a nice surprise trying to work it all out :-)
 
Images taken with a Seestar S50 telescope, 20 images were captured then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

​~ The solar surface with complex sunspot AR 4197 ~ 
~ 31st August 2025 ~

​Now there’s a very interesting sunspot group on the surface of the Sun designated AR 4197, it’s very large and active and has many smaller sunspot that appear to be interconnected with each other… it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with this area in the next couple of days!
 
It’s a treat but nearly every morning the Suns light shines (refracts) through the cut glass that surrounds our patio, it’s so pretty. Today I capture an image with my iPhone with all the colours :-)
 
Solar images were taken with a Seestar S50 telescope with an attached solar filter, 20 images were captures then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

~ Wow! Active Sun Today 28th August 2025 ~
 
Wow! There was such a lot of activity on the solar surface today, I finally set up the ZWO ASI 174mm camera with the Lunt solar telescope and took some pictures of those very active sunspots on the eastern limb.
 
I was just blown away with the detail that this little camera was able to capture and I’ll use it from now on instead of the Canon 700D DSLR :-)
 
(Ha) images were taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope; the close up image was with a 2x Barlow lens attached to the ZWO camera.
 
The white light images were taken with a Seestar S50 with its attached solar filter, 20 images stacked in Registax6 and processed in PS.

Sunspot AR4191 is growing larger very quickly, there is also a lot of solar activity happening on the eastern limb with more sunspots and active prominences rotating into view.

​The (Ha) image was taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x barlow lens attached. The white light images were taken with a Seestar S50 telescope and attached solar filter.

Oh my! It was just so beautiful this morning with the planets Venus and Jupiter close together among the stars of Gemini rising in the beautiful pastel colours of the dawn sky; it was just so calm and peaceful :-)

My image was taken with Canon G7X Mark 11 camera set on manual focus with 1 second exposure and ISO 2000.

I was out shopping at BigW and came across this ever so cute little LEGO playset called ‘Stargazing with Celeste’ the little owl even has a telescope to look at the Moon, how cute is that!
 
The age group for this build is from 6 years old, it has quite a few tiny pieces so really I think an older person would have to supervise just to help the young child if it’s needed.
 
Some product details from LEGO below:
https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/stargazing-camping-vehicle-42603
 
Astronomy playset for kids who love creative role play – Stargazing with Celeste is a creative anytime treat for girls and boys aged 6 plus as well as fans of the Animal Crossing™ video game series.
 
Nature playset inspires imaginative play – Comes with a minifigure of Celeste the owl from Animal Crossing™, a telescope toy, astronomy book, campfire, teapot, cup, cupcake and precious star fragments.
 
Cosmic fun – Kids role-play learning how to use the telescope with Celeste and making a wish on a shooting star, before gathering the star fragments and decorating the crescent-moon chair.

More Space LEGO at:
https://www.mystardustobservatory.com/space-lego.html
​

~ Waxing Gibbous (12 day old) Moon with bright ray systems of Tycho & Copernicus craters ~
On the 5th August 2025 ~

Tycho crater is a very prominent crater, it’s one of the youngest on the lunar surface, and its approximate age is about 100 million years, that’s very young compared with the total age of the Moon at over 4 billion years old!
 
From after the 9-day-old phase you’ll start to see more and more of this ray system that’s connected to the ejected material that was produced from the impact that caused Tycho crater. By the full Moon phase (14 days old) you can trace the distance of these many ejected rays to over 1500 km across the lunar surface.
 
The other large impact crater seen here not far off the termination line is the crater Copernicus, which has a complex terraced wall with a large central mountain range in the middle. You can spend a lot of time at the eyepiece just looking around this area, as the detail is just incredible!
 
An excellent book that I use that teaches me everything I need to know about the Moon is
Hamlyn ‘Atlas of the Moon’ by Antonin Rukl.
 
Every night the Moon offers up so much to see as the sunlight illuminates different features along the termination line right up to the full Moon phase, then after that you get to see everything in reverse with all the light and shadows going in the opposite direction.
 
My image was taken with the little Seestar S50 telescope, 25 images were captured then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.