Hear hear!

From The BadAstronomer himself:


"I’m tired of it. When I look out my window now I see a future I’ve been dreaming of my whole life, a future that seems just out of my reach. When my children, my grandchildren, look out their windows in that future, y’know what I want them to see?

The blue-green crescent Earth hanging in a pitch black sky over a cratered horizon.

Let’s give space a chance."

Too.  Bloody.  Right.

I am in complete concordance with this.

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!

Back on the Rails (somewhat)

Ok.  Tonight I went down to the domain, armed with Jacqui's 20D, some fairly well remembered instruction, some mints and faithful AstroTorch.  Determined I was to get me some dSLR pics, and well, I did :)  You can see them over at Jacqui's and my Flickr Page or of course on the Picasa Web Albums .. here.

Phew!  I can see how people can lose themselves in this camera thing, sometimes to the expense of their photographs!  My mind was spinning after my last post. Well to be honest I was weeping like a spoiled 3-year old who can't have anymore lollies.

First off, I need a job, then, when I have a job, I need a new scope, with nice motorised mount and a good dSLR mount and .. oh crap, oh well.  I guess I will just have to keep to the spirit of this blog and do it myself.

Coming soon!  Jason attempts astromount III - this time with the length to fit the 25mm! And one of these!

Meanwhile, as you chuckle at the thought of me messing about with tools, here's some VERY pretty pictures for you to look at.

First off, NASA has this and a bit of this, oh and a whole heap of these. Then the charming, witty and terribly attractive Dr Plait has this to feast upon! Or for the full mind-intercourse .. click here. So back to NASA, or more precisely HiRISE is offering you the chance to pick the next photograph of Mars, which by the way is at closest approach on Friday if anyone's interested! Oh you will need to open an account with HiRISE if you go there.

Okies, well that about wraps it up for this post - I am happy that I got some results from the 20D .. this is a good thing, so all I need now is some time, and motivation for the IXUS mount and Scotch Mount!

*whimper*

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1244686/Amateur-star-gazer-captures-astonishing-images-Milky-Way-hole-roof-garden-shed.html

Linky linky linky

NASA has tickled my fancy again with Mission to Jupiter and then there's this: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-018 ... I will just pause here for a few seconds while you all work out how unbelievably cool that is. Oh and I promise I will be back with astro stuff soon - promise. Just doing a lot of photography atm, including stars - and yes I have images for you ... soon!

Also! Wooo!  Made it the top of a google search ... here, try it.  Course you'd have to be looking for tiny lions :D

Southern Skies

Southern Skies
Originally uploaded by chickinthepark1

Ok, so here's last night's timelapse. Couple of things here - I finally found somewhere really dark to do this, and it's awesome to have some darkness. Second thing is that I am really starting to think that my camera (Canon IXUS 80IS) has too small an aperture to do this kind of thing justice. I haven't done all the tests I need to yet, but it's starting to feel that way.

This was shot on an 8s exposure (too long - stars have trails, esp Alpha and Beta Centauri there) one shot every 20 seconds, then time-mapped in AfterEffects by a factor of about 2.5.

There's another one (here) that shows the sunset before the stars really came out.

PS: chickinthepark1 is the name of the Flickr Pro account that Jax and I share - the way to tell whose photos are whose is to look for the "Val" in the tags :)

From NASA today ...

Star Maker is a lovely shot as always.  And this .. oh this is just cool ...

Star party II went ok on thursday .. due to timing and clouds it was more a BBQ than Star party. Just as we got ramped up with the scope it clouded right over. Before that happened, we got in M42 (yay!) and the Pleiades and then the Hyades in Taurus - aka "The Raining Stars" which were beautiful as the scope focussed in on them (25mm not 9mm for the wide view) so a big thanks to One-Minute Astronomer for the heads up!

There's some (non-astro) photos of the evening up on Flickr if anyone's interested. Next time I think we may have to move it to Pip's house (darker) or a lonely beach somewhere (darker still).

If the sky stays clear tonight, I am going to go try a longish timelapse of the southern stars over Snells - so keep an eye out for that, or at least me making excuses about why I didn't do it :)

NASA - you lovely thing you!

Bright Layered Deposits is NASA's offering today ... and quite lovely they are too. Then there's the news from PhysOrg - wastelands, dark energy, WISE-dom, small exoplanets and massive stars.

A little closer to home .. there's plans afoot for another star party .. on thursday.  So this time - weather permitting - I will be able to get some shots to share with everyone ... mind you most of the people who read this blog will BE there, so maybe the point is moot :)

Hopefully will be starting work on new mounting system very soon ... I want to try some prime-focus astro-photography.  With my camera and no lens.  To that end I really need to clean my mirror and collumate my scope - so I will bring you all pics and commentary on that when it happens :)