Clear sky outside last night allowed me to go out for some astronomy!
It’s somewhat limited this time of year with just the amount of good darkness available, really only about an hour or two of decent darkness. Add on the bright moon and the sky isn’t the darkest thing around even in the countryside.
Last night was really just to familiarise myself with the sky again as I’ve not been keeping up with it for a while until now where ive felt a bit more stable with life.
I realised Ive lost my camera adaptor so I didn’t get to use my camera, not a huge deal as I have a new dedicated astro camera coming. But As the moon was nice and bright and it reached over the trees early in the morning I got a quick couple of shots with my Pixel XL (1st gen).
With it hanging low in the sky the atmosphere was a bit rubbish but still they came out quite nice for single shot images.
These were through a WO ZS71 with a TV 25mm Plössl, and TV 7mm Nagler
Mars unfortunately would not clear the garden obstructions. I’ll need to take it out the front where I have a clearer view of that side of the sky next weekend assuming good weather.
There’s some good areas around here. The Australian outback but look amazing. The best place I’ve physically been so far has been the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
The camera doesn’t do it justice in this case. With my eye I was able to see a lot more detail than the picture shows, especially around the right hand shadowed areas where the craters become a lot more clearly defined from the shadows given off, and the top of the moon also where there are a large number of smaller craters which you can easily spend some time looking at.
During the lunar ecplise, that rock was hiding between -10° below and 15° above the horrizon. In other words, I have no clue. Just seemed like a very fast “back to full moon” from what I could see.
so I didn’t get to use my camera, not a huge deal as I have a new dedicated astro camera coming. But As the moon was nice and bright and it reached over the trees early in the morning I got a quick couple of shots with my Pixel XL (1st gen).
