Copernicus crater

Now that Spring has sprung…well,not really!. We got lightly spanked with 7 Inches of snow a few days ago. With the Sun climbing ever higher each day.The snow we did get is slowly melting away. I did have to remove the snow from the observatory dome ,so I could get some imaging in.
I actually wasn’t going to do any imaging last night ,but the sky had cleared enough to do so. Can’t waste a clear sky,even if it is for a couple hours.
The temp was dropping ,and the transparency was pretty bad due to the low pressure system that have us the snow a few days ago. Yup…it is just slowly wandering away from the NE coast. If the stars are twinkling ,then I don’t bother to open the dome!. Last night was the exception. It makes it tough to grab images worthy of posting. The image below was a 500 frame AVI. All said and done,I could only use 30 frames. Why?..you may ask. Well,yes I could have stacked the whole file,but trying to get all the images to perfectly align at a 90-95% best frame value would have created a extremely fuzzy, muddled mess,and rendered the image unusable.
The Copernicus crater is a object that I have been wanting to image with the Neximage 5. Seems that clouds have been the center of attention since January.
The Copernicus crater offers a lot of detail and can easily be seen with a good pair of binoculars.
If you have a scope I highly suggest you give this crater a look. According to some sources.Copernicus was formed between 800 million and 1 billion years ago.
If you look at this crater you will notice the huge amount of regolith that surrounds the crater. More amazing is the fact that some of the rubble surrounding the crater are huge chunks of lunar bedrock that has been thrown from the crater at impact. Knowing that this crater is approximately 56 miles/95 Km’s across ,and judging from how far the debris extends from the crater.The impact must have been incredibly intense.

Image credit: Andrew

Wow…. I got a Thank you award! :)

RULES (NOTHING TOO DIFFICULT)

1. As usual a big thank you and a link back to the person who nominated you.
2. Mention 5 things you would like to do with your life, no matter how mad or tame.
3. Nominate six bloggers and say why they have left their mark on you. Hence the name “The Thank You Award”
4. let them know.
5. Say a big THANK YOU TO EVERYONE ON WORDPRESS!!

1. I am taking this opportunity to thank http://charliespicsandme.wordpress.com/ for giving me a Thank you award. I never knew awards such as these were being given.
2. Hmmm.. 5 things I would like to do with my life..

1) Spend a week (during summer) ,at the Arctic circle even though I hate snow..lol
2) Break the world sky diving record. I think jumping at 130,000 feet would do it. I am not a fan of heights.
3) Teach Astronomy
4) Strike it rich panning for gold. One of my other passions !.
5) Invent a time machine. So I can do the things I love over and over again!. Oh, and go into the future,the return to warn myself about making stupid mistakes!

The 5 bloggers I nominate are:
1) http://schelleycassidy.wordpress.com/ I enjoy the “What is it” images. They cause me to think “What is that?”. Lots of fun!
2) http://urbanskywatcher.com/ Lots of interesting Astronomy articles!.
3) http://alienshores52.wordpress.com/ A blog with many scenic pictures and astrophotography images!.
4) http://jdkittlesphotography.wordpress.com/ Another blog very beautiful scenic images and star trails shots. Impressive!.
5) http://leannecolephotography.com/ What can I say except..WOW!. Definitely a inspiring blog that feeds the viewer with a lot of ideas on different imaging techniques !.

And finally. Thank you to all my fellow bloggers near and far!

Neximage 5 and our Moon

The new Neximage 5 has been busy taking images of either our Sun or ,of Jupiter. Any chances of getting an image of the moon has been thwarted by clouds, cold,or the fact that it has been full when the sky has been clear. My chance to get out ,and capture images with the new camera came yesterday. We had a bright blue sky,but the wind was really cold . Being in the observatory made observing/imaging tolerable.The sky,even though it was clear,was pretty turbulent,and looking at the Sun was like looking at a paved road on a very hot day.
This is the first time I have ever used this imager to capture shots of the Moon. I was quite impressed with the detail I was able to see on the monitor. I shot 12 short video’s ,but haven’t had much time processing with Registax 6.
Below is a shot of the Moon,and the Apennine mountains. This mountain range is quite close to the Apollo 15 landing site.

Image credit : Me

Lunar eclipse the movie???.

Here is a a lunar eclipse movie I put together using my Pentax DSLR.This is my first try at making a movie from multiple images.It isn’t Star wars quality but,I had a lot of fun trying 🙂 .

Enjoy!!

Last nights Lunar eclipse

Hey,I finally gave my scope a breath of fresh air…woohoo!! 🙂 .

It certainly felt good to have some decent skies for observing after 3 months of sitting idle and collecting dust.No,not me…my scope!!.I wasn’t sure if our skies here in central NewHampshire were going to cooperate for the lunar eclipse but,to my surprise they did.Well,sortof !.Since my schedule doesn’t allow me to stay awake very late into the evening for observing (3am comes early when it is cold outside!).I just couldn’t pass at the chance to get in some eye piece time and with the terrible skies that we have had this winter,this was almost like my second Christmas!.I tried to take a power nap before the start of the eclipse but,I was so giddy with excitement that I stayed awake and kept looking out my bedroom window.After a hour of tossing and turning I suddenly became the president of the “Why bother club”and got up for a night of observing.I set the scope up at around 8:30pm and immediately started watching for the start of the event.The skies at the time were clear and clean but,that didn’t last for very long as clouds began to invade my space.Seeing the cloud bank slowly making it’s way in,the first words out of my mouth were “Great…I have been hosed again!”.It seems that Mother nature has a rather cruel sense of humor because, just as I was about to call it a evening and pack up,the skies cleared.It was looking good for a start to finish eclipse but,just as the moon was approaching full eclipse the clouds rolled in again and this time not only did the sky become mostly cloudy but,it started to lightly snow….*insert naughty word here!!!!*.Once again,I started the beginning stages of packing up when suddenly I could see the full eclipse through broken clouds.In a rush I reconnected my camera to the scope and fired off a few quick shots,one of which can be seen below.It isn’t the best quality but,considering I was shooting through what looked to be a high altitude fish bowl,I think it came out pretty good.

I tweaked the image a bit in a effort to bring out more detail using Photoshop Elements.Note the darker region to the south…those are clouds.Clouds=Bad!!.