On the Sunday night after the InOMN I wanted to spend some time with Mars and do a series of images to show the rotation of the planet. I was at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn and the sky was very clear.
 
I waited until Mars was quite up in the sky so the air was not so turbulent and proceeded to take my AVI movies, over a period of three hours.
 
I just loved the way so much detail was on display with this little ZWO planetary camera…is just so amazing!
 
Clearly on show right across the planet, in the dark area that is shaped like a large caterpillar, were Sinus Gomer, Mare Cimmerium and Mare Sirenum, it’s just so exciting to see so much detail on the surface of the planet. (I have marked more features on the image for you to see)
 
Opposition of Mars will be on the 14th October 2020 and I cannot wait to see what will be on show on the surface, the planet will also be at its largest so it will be very bright…he’s hoping the dust storms stay away until then :-)
 
Images taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies were captured with between 2500 & 3000 frames then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4

After taking pictures of the Moon for InOMN I then turned my attention to the planets, which were all on show in the night sky.
 
At the moment there are Jupiter and Saturn high up in the northern sky that are getting closer together and heading for a conjunction in two months time on the 14th December 2020.
 
Then the brilliant planet Mars getting higher up now in the north-eastern sky and putting on such a wonderful display with many features on show on the surface of the planet, opposition of Mars will be on the 14th October 2020.
 
Hopefully the sky will be clear enough for me to take some incredible images of our two planets coming close tighter and there seems to be no sign yet of any dust storms…yippee :-)

Images taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies were captured with between 2500 & 3000 frames then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4

This was the lovely wide angle view of the planets Jupiter and Saturn with the nine day old waxing gibbous Moon low in the south western sky just before midnight on the on the 26th September 2020.
 
Jupiter & Saturn are fully in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer) and the Gibbous Moon has just entered into the neighbouring constellation of Capricornus (The Ram).
 
The sky was very bright because of the Moonlight but you could still see the patterns of the constellation with the brighter stars on display. I’ve also named some of the other constellations in the area that are now setting in the western sky.
 
Jupiter and Saturn will now been seen coming closer and closer together for there rare 20 year conjunction that will happen on the 21st December 2020…so keep an eye on this wonderful astronomical event over the next couple of months :-)
 
Image taken at on the field at Leyburn at my Stardust Observatory with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a camera tripod. The setting were set at ISO400 and exposure 15 seconds the focal length was 18mm and image was cropped slightly.

~ InOMN at My Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in Qld Australia ~
(Saturday the 26th September 2020)
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/
 
Because of Covid-19, I decided to drive out to my Stardust Observatory in country Queensland and just have an up close and personal experience with our Moon :-)
 
It was a beautiful clear night with no clouds at all in the sky and the most notable lunar features on display on the terminator line were the magnificent Crater Copernicus and the huge Crater Clavius in the southern highlands, which looked just stunning.
 
I did manage to show a couple of people the Moon through my telescope as they were visiting the owners of the property where my observatory is located, there were many exclamations of Wow…is that for real!
 
So I feel very happy to have shown some people the beauty of our Moon :-)
 
If you participated in InOMN please download you certificate at:
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/participation-certificate/
 
The close up images that I took with the little ZWO camera are just amazing, so much detail on show…I’m very pleased with the result and will do a lot more lunar imaging with this camera in the coming months….
 
Images were taken with 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a Canon 700D camera for the full disc image, and then adding a 2x barlow lens to take closer pictures of the lunar features on the terminator line. I then replaced the DSLR camera with my ZWO ASI120MC-S camera and a 3x Barlow lens to capture the high-resolution images of the lunar surface.

If you participated in InOMN please download you certificate at:
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/participation-certificate/
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We managed to grab a couple of days to visit the Queensland North Coast at Noosa last weekend and were rewarded with this magical sunset over Lake Doonella at Tewantin. While I was taking my pictures there was a very lucky fisherman reeling in quite a few flathead fish for his dinner :-)
 
If you look closely at the image you’ll see some really unusual clouds that look like fine hair floating in the sky. These clouds are called Cirrus clouds and it looks like there is a very strong wind shear up there making them spread out like fine filaments.
 
I’ve never seen Cirrus cloud in this pattern before; it looks like these particular clouds are called Cirrus fibratus clouds…how exciting!  Genus: Cirrus (curl of hair)
 
I found this information on Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_cloud
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera with a Tamron 18-400mm lens attached set at different focal lengths with an ISO 100.

​I can’t believe how big Mars is getting now as compared with just one month ago and the detail on the surface is just amazing…Woohoo! :-) :-) :-)
 
I took this image with some light cloud in the sky and can’t wait until we finally get a clear night to capture even more detail on the surface.

The image was taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached.

​An AVI movie file was captured with 1400 frames that was stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

Like all the planets in our solar system, Earth and Mars orbit the sun. But Earth is closer to the sun, and therefore races along its orbit more quickly. Earth makes two trips around the sun in about the same amount of time that Mars takes to make one trip. So sometimes the two planets are on opposite sides of the sun, very far apart, and other times, Earth catches up with its neighbour and passes relatively close to it.
 
Please read more at about the opposition of Mars at NASA Science Mars Exploration Program website at: https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/night-sky/opposition/
https://mars.nasa.gov
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