Calamity, Cameras and Transit

May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese curse.  And boy have I been appreciating that curse recently.  First there was the break in and loss of the 20D ... I've already told that story here, so you might know of it already.  So .. the 60D arrived!  We'd had it for four days, then I fell 4 meters off a cliff.  Carrying it.  I and the camera got a dunking in freezing cold water.

The good news is that 48 hours in the hot water cupboard with some dessicant revived the camera.  And it seems to be as good as new.  What a relief!  The weather and other environmental factors (scumbag moon) have prohibited me from starting up the star shots since the weekend, but I hope you will follow me on this journey of exploration.

Anyways ... on to today.  Today being of course, the sixth of the sixth, transit of Venus time!  We had clear skies this morning, for a little while, then clouds came rolling in to obscure 1st contact on the transit, with patchy clouds we got a small viewing around 11:30 this morning, we saw Venus halo'd against the star, and then it rained.

And rained.

Hopes were dashed, until around 4pm, the sky cleared right up and we got some beautiful stuff then!  Just as Venus was approaching egress, we finally started seeing some awesome stuff!

This is shot with the new camera and the awesome solar observing rig we hand built for the occasion.  Venus is the dark circle at the bottom and the other blotches that look like dirt on the ccd are actually sunspots :D  Added bonus there!

Hopefully gfkBill will post the shots he managed to get as well, but all in all, a good day :D

And here's that solar observing rig :D

April Skies

Well here we are in April already.  I apologise for my lack of activity of late, lots of things happening around my life at the moment, including injuries, physiotherapy and notably, a burglary.  Which, it has to be said, sucked. They got my telescope lenses and our camera.

So Bill is doing awesome work with the tracker at the moment, I wont be shooting for a while :(

Dear Canon NZ, any chance of a free 5D? Mk II will do, I'm not greedy!

In other news, the Hike to the Stars event we all planned and spent money on camping gear to organise was totally cancelled due to the worsening weather, so we're thinking October/November now, or possibly a smaller expedition will happen later, anyone whose interested should watch this space!

Anyways, on to the skies this month, as that's supposed to be the purpose of this post.

Jupiter and Venus will be visible early in the evening sky this month, after being a pair of drama queens last month.  Mars is still out and about and getting dimmer and smaller as we pull away from it. Saturn, that beautiful gem, is up in the northern sky and Titan is well visible about 4 ring-diameters from the planet, an awesome site and if you want to see it, come over, and bring your own lenses because I no longer have any :(

The usual suspects are around this month, Crux, Orion, Scorpio, both Magellanic clouds (see Bill's awesome photos),

Mercury makes a good looking morning sky appearance this month, rising due east 2 hours before the sun in the middle of April, in the beginning of the month, it's "only" 95,000,000km from us!

As usual I will be updating the 1200mm Calendar with what I can find this month (Google-Fu pending of course).  Speaking of Calendars, I have added some calendars to 1200mm's including:  Cassini's tour of the Saturn System,

Oh and the blog got it's 10,000th page view this week! YAY!

Anyways ... keep looking up guys!



Interesting and/or Awesome things!

• Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Overview
• Starry starry night
• Venus and Jupiter cuddling up in night sky
• One last show for Venus, Jupiter and moon
• Saturn's Rings & Biggest Moon Dazzle in New Photo

March Skies

A good month coming up!

First off, 1200mm has a public Google calendar now, for events (like the hike on 24 March) and general stargazing goodness (Mars in opposition tonight!).

so, March So far:

4 March: Mars in opposition.
8 March: Moon close to Mars, Full Moon
11 March: Moon close to Saturn
14 March: Jupiter and Venus close together
15 March: Last Quarter Moon
20 March: Autumn Equinox, day and night are equal length
23 March: New Moon
24 March: 1200mm Hike to the Stars - if you;d like to come to this, please contact us.
26 March: Crescent Moon close to Jupiter and Venus.

Skies in March from the Royal Astronomical Society of NZ

For us Rodney/Snells Types, lots of LMC and SMC this month, as well as the usual cuplrits of Orion, Crux et Al.

Looking forward to some good moon and mars viewing!

Southern Skies in February

So, what to look forward to this month?

Straight up early in the month, the moon is full on the 8th, which unfortunately coincides with the peak night of the Centaurids meteor shower.

The moon then proceeds to last quarter on the 15th and is new again on the 22nd.

Early in the month, Both Jupiter and Venus will be visible in the west, during the early part of the evening. With Saturn and Mars rising later in the evenings, towards midnight.  These planets will continue their dance around the skies this month.

Orion is very visible this month, so some awesome M42 opportunities will be able to be had, 1200mm is thinking of a stack for that one, through the scope on AstroCam 2 :)

The Seven Sisters (Pleiades/Matariki) is also hanging around and is stunning even through a small pair of binoculars.

The 1200mm crew is planning our first star party of 2012 on February 8 to attempt to pierce the full moon's glare and see some Centaurids from the meteor shower.

And finally, there's another small meteor shower (Gamma Normids) starting up on the 25th of February, that will peak in March.

Planetary goodness.

Pity I have to work tonight ... Mercury, Venus and Jupiter all visible to the naked eye.  Ahhhh, the dance of the planets :D

Kinect + MS Telescope = Awesomeness

This looks like too much fun... and it that Crux behind Saturn, falling apart as he spins away around 2 minutes in?

Kinect Telescope

Another fantastic night

Looking great out there!  Sky is clear, been a clear day ... I'm going to be looking for more Milky Way images toinght, and possibly some Venus/Mars shots until Jupiter comes up :D

w0000t!

Got some shots!!!  Some nice ones!  It was cold (0.6 degrees coldest), the sky was beautiful and the seeing was also awesome!  Bill came over, Rusty and Pip  were here, Jeremy took pics and Eddie came over .. was a good good night!! As well as good shots, had a great time!

So shots live over here:  http://flic.kr/p/8hm9z2, http://flic.kr/p/8hpoTs, http://flic.kr/p/8hm9k6

This is my new fave :D

I would also like to take a second to say thanks to Canon and CHDK.  I got some nice DNGs from my system tonight :D  And thanks to all you guys for coming over and going wow!

Also, completed Bahitov Mask today and it works like a charm!  Instant and EASY focus :D - V important, plus I made it myself too!

6mm moon

Ok, lots of montaging going on over here .. will be better when I get the WHOLE of the moon I guess .. stupid clouds.

But anyways ... here's the latest WIP at Flickr ...

For those of you who are interested ... each tile is 1956x1623 pixels and there are 92 of them so far, full image is 17500px on a side (at this point).   The file is 1.19 Gb with each tile around 1-2 Mb.  The tiles are all RGB at this stage and the only post that's been done is cropping as I have a bit of crap on my CCD :(  So there's still chromatic aberration in there.

However. I don't have ALL of the moon, as this is my first try, so I will probably get back out there tonight and get some more - weather permitting of course. (sorry hon).

This still not the finished item .. call it a WIP or proof of concept.  I love my 6mm :D

One planetary evening

So far .. Saturn, Venus, Mars and a passing airliner :)

Coming up - Jupiter, Uranus, Luna and will have a go at Neptune, although that may be too close to the Moon tonight :)

Also, resolved the double in Acrux (one of my FAVORITE stars) :D

6mm for the win!  I can resolve a planetary disk for Venus and Mars .. for the first time!!! Well Mars for the first time FOR SURE anyways.

Happy!

Today's things ...

BREAKING: Another Jupiter impact? | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Mars Rover surpasses Viking -1 record

and this is very interesting, and inspiring ...

The Mars Underground

And this from @BrianShiro ... Life on Titan?

Man Conquers Space

Just found this. Oh. Wow. I looked all over for a way to contact the director to offer my meager services for free, but can't find a link there :( So get over there!

Love the trailer too ...

Oh what a night!

In the end .. it's now 0341 and clouds have closed in ... I got to see Venus, Saturn, teh Moon, Mars, Jupiter and I'm 95% sure I saw Uranus ... for the first time, at least there was a very small greenish disc about where the planet should have been, so I am calling that a win.  That little puppy is approx 3.074 billion km away (20.55 AU + change).

Small green dot, 3 billion kilometers, yeah. Shit. That's amazing.

5 planets, 7 satellites and I resolved Rigil Kent (α Centauri) as a double and Acrux (α Crux) as a bright blob and another one (triple system, it's complicated :) Also a bunch of startrails and I made about half my scotch mount and an edit to the IXUS mount that I hope will enable me to shoot through the 25mm or Bill's sexy little 15mm.

I am happy, tired but happy. A good night!

The plan for tonight

Ok, so I am planning something.  It will hinge on whether I get the scotch mount done by tonight of course (drill charging now) but, here goes.

1730-1830 Venus Setting in the NW    Awesome Crescent, using 9mm + Barlow
1800-1900 Mars in NNW ~ 35°
2100-0100 Moon - half full
2100-0100 Saturn follows Moon down the sky  Oh so beautiful, will be looking again soon
2350 Neptune Rises
0200 Jupiter Rises in East
0220 Uranus Rises in East
0513 Mercury Rises

12 hours of solar system goodness :)

Lets see if I can do it :D

Ninib, Kronos, the Protector and Sower of the Seed.

Oh yum yum .. and they're the big pictures too!

And since we're talking about one of my favorite NASA missions (Cassini/Huygens), here's this and this and this.
It seems Saturn makes everyone poetic, hardly surprising, it is magnificent.

In other news, I picked up some more gear recently - yesterday was at Mitre10 Mega in Albany, getting the ingredients for a scotch mount, there will be a photo journal of that.  I want to just say a big thanks to Mitre10 Mega tho, you guys were awesome!

Also got a remote for the 20D today, which means I can do Bulb long exposure stuff, on the scotch mount and off it (SLR StarTrails anyone?)

Beauty, from 248,931,072km out

Here's a lovely video from JPL, the Spirit of Mars.  One minute from the Mars rover, Spirit.  Especially beautiful to me was the sunset/rise at about 45 seconds in.  Oh and the timelapses were pretty cool too!  Also, NASA has more from Spirit over here!

Speaking of which, I forgot to tell you last night, I have a new sunset timelapse that also shows Jupiter setting.  That can be found here.  Enjoy!

Party Party Party

Had a small star party happen last night.  In attendance were The Flat and significant friends, Bill, Pip and Rusty. Despite the wonders of a beautiful clear night, a lot of people were more interested in the laser of Martins than the stars themselves.  But there was fire, friends and stellar fusion, so that was all good.

We started with Jupiter before he went down - there he is in the pic, just above the streetlamp. Then M42, which is always a fave.  In fact I think I am addicted to M42, it's beautiful!

Then while waiting for Mars, we went sky hunting - mainly looking for the Horsehead (IC434) and even with running inside and checking Stellarium, we couldn't see it - we found the right spot in the sky, but we thought it was too dim maybe? The plan next time is to go somewhere really dark and try.

Also, there was a good number of both satellites and meteorites visible last night - the best of which left some lovely glowing trails across the sky.  I should have time-lapsed it, but was ouit of battery :(  Perhaps tonight.

Then we went on looking at things ... we found something that was christened "Bill's Blob" just off the SMC, which it turns out is NGC104, Mag 4 ... all that could be said was "My God, it's full of stars!"  And some of the detail within the Milky Way was awe-inspiring - reminded me why I love doing all this.

Once Mars came up, we all had a look at the bright orange blobby disk, was close to horizon and very wobbly,  and then it was all wrapped up really.

So that was an awesome time, and my thanks to Bill and Pip et al for sharing the wonders of the universe with me, and to everyone else who liked the frikken laser!

Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of War!

Went observing last night, with Martin and Karen.   Started off at the chateau du Val, where we had an awesome view of such wonderful sights as the Great Nebula in Orion, Jupiter with all four Galilean moons clearly visible and a fruitless but fun search for Uranus.  After that it was heading towards midnight and we decided to pack up the bucket and head down to the beach to watch Mars rise (12.07).

After waiting for a bit, Karen pops up saying "what's that orange star over there?" and we were off!  Mars appears very small in my scope, but quite bright and very very orange.  Quite quite beautiful .. most definitely a crescent in the scope, no sign of the Dogs of War of course - too small and too dim I would think.

There was much cursing on my part regarding the size of my scope, and what I would give for a 16-inch bucket, not to mention getting my hand pinched in the springs causing some little resentment towards my scope :)

So a good night all in all, some lovely things seen.  The Orion nebula and of course Mars.  Also Io appeared kind of red to me last night, could have just been atmospherics of course, or could be that Io is slightly red :)  Also, the night was filled with shooting stars - perhaps a fringe of the Geminids creeping down to the southern hemisphere :)

No pics of the night's activities of course, because I forgot to take the Camera Mount :(  I am, an Idiot.

This is HARD

Ok, Astrocam2 works!  But it's a viciously difficult thing to focus and control.  I am having a wee hiatus between observations at the moment, both for a break and also because I need to give the moon an hour or so to get a bit higher in the sky.

So, the cam system works very well.  But it is very hard to control, very very hard to focus.  This isn't a bitch session, but I can see why a motorised 'scope would be ftw in the situation.  Focus as it goes kinda thing.

I grabbed some video of Jupiter, will transfer that from laptop nowish.  I'm immediately noticing some things however.  The colours and focus is excellent around the sides of the image, but the planet just goes to white in the center of the image ... anyone know why this might be?

I am such a n00b.

In other news, Canon should be here on Tuesday/Wednesday and then I can start the hack etc.  Also just ordered a 2x barlow from AstroNZ, so that should be here soonish too.

I will be back with more later

Hot hot hot!

New images of Mercury:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php

And NASA bombs the moon
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2009-10-09-nasa-lcross-moon_N.htm