What did you see tonight?

[Nikolai De Silva]

Not really tonight, but a couple of days back, not a great sky but some view in the evening just after the sunset with the moon close to go down. But sadly, now it's raining so hard and bad here since last Wednesday as I could remember. Captured with a GoPro. The streaks aren't auroras, they are clouds 😁. And just a short exposed image, with a bit of editing.

[Sirius Bizness]

Thursday night into Friday morning was incredible with the aurora.  Photos taken on iPhone 12 Pro with 10 second exposure in Derbyshire

Also took a shot of the Pleiades , Jupiter and Orion. 

[lunator]

These are all excellent pics . We had local cloud cover. I did get out tonight but the conditions were far from ideal but managed a decent view of Saturn, the Moon and some doubles. 

Cheers

Ian

[Ags]

Cloud cover prevented any sighting of the aurorae, and also of comet Tsuchinsan, but a brief gap opened on Friday and I had a peek at Mars and Jupiter with my ZS66. The Great Red Spot was visible on Jupiter and the Little White Spot was visible on Mars!

Edited Sunday at 09:12 by Ags

[SuburbanMak]

Looked good earlier as I was on teenage taxi duties but there was a lot of high cloud about by the time I got out. Managed some nice views of Saturn and Jupiter - pity about the cloud cover as seeing was good and Jupiter briefly looked superb.  Tak FC100 DC & SVBony 3-7mm zoom a great planetary combination. 

[DAT]

First time observing from a reasonably dark location, guessing around bortle 4-5.

Actually more difficult to find my way around with so many stars about. The area around Cassiopeia looked like one big cluster and Caroline’s rose was easy to spot.

Lots of extra detail in familiar targets that I usually observe from my bortle 9 garden, even if the moon was shining bright.

Gatecrashed by accident the Guildford astronomy club meeting and I would like to say a special thank you to the couple who let me take my first peak through a 16” obsession, the dumbbell looked huge even without dark adaptation. ( sorry you left before I could say so, I was too busy trying to figure out where to point my dob)

[Jim L]

Aphrodite, aka Venus, descending over the Gulf of Corinth from Delphi. Zoom in near the center of the photo and she should appear.

Normally lost in the suns glare at sunset it was a treat to see her so high and brilliant behind the setting sun. I suppose having a bit of altitude and clean air helped.

 

 

[Moonshed]

Managed to see comet A3 just now through the bins and was pleased to finally catch it. The seeing conditions were not particularly good but was able to a diffuse long tail stretching behind the comet head. Not visible with the naked eye but still a joy to see through the bins. 

[Pixies]

Me too! In bins at first but once I had found it and my eyes had settled-down, I could just make it out naked-eye. Some hazy cloud towards the horizon didn't help with contrast.

I'll be heading upstairs to look out of the bathroom window, shortly!

[Ratlet]

Just been out to check how clear it will be.  Hopefully going to test out some stuff for a more permanent setup.

The planned observing area looks good and has a nice window of opportunity between houses to the south east.  I'll call it the "Sirius Gap" as it is the only chance I'll have of seeing it come winter.

Main testing tonight will be EAA with the 102ED.  Already off to a good start.  Got power to the summerhouse and got a 900W oil filled radiator out the since dinner.  Nice and warm 😁.  Hopefully mean I'll now have a warm room.  No lights so will need to rob a colour changing led from somewhere in the house for some dim red.

Capella is looking real good though.  Tempting me with promises of open clusters...

[Pixies]

managed a quick phone pic, too: 

[kev]

Just seen it for the first time myself!  At last

[bosun21]

5 minutes ago, Pixies said:

managed a quick phone pic, too: 

Are those wires?

[Pixies]

4 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

Are those wires?

Yep - phone wires.

Tail showing  better now:

[Pixies]

Sorry - last one before it vanished. Taken from an open upstairs window on a step ladder!

[TiffsAndAstro]

43 minutes ago, Pixies said:

Yep - phone wires.

Tail showing  better now:

That's a great shot. With nice composition too 

[TiffsAndAstro]

7 minutes ago, Pixies said:

Sorry - last one before it vanished. Taken from an open upstairs window on a step ladder!

Almost through the window on the tower thing.

[Ags]

The Moon and Saturn in the same 3 degree field in my ZS66 and ES 20/68. Zoomed in with the SLV 4 for 97x, revealing iffy seeing. But I did have a spectacular view of Vallis Schroteri. Saturn was a grey blob in the SLV 4 however.

[SwiMatt]

While jealous of the comet showings, here seeing was great until the clouds came out of nowhere, and it rewarded me with a crisp and wonderful split of the double double, followed by a long look at Delta Lyrae, which with its 4 main components and other stars looks almost like a cluster... Hoping for good weather tomorrow night to get out and enjoy a nice Lunar session 🤞🏼

[Ratlet]

Mostly spent playing with the 102ED.  In the warm.  Went out at 2100 and got in at 01:30 and not feeling significantly cold.  The joys of a warm room.

Did some live stacking with sharpcap but the images were pretty rough.  Bit sure what the problem was but it is almost certainly operator error.  Ended up swapping to siril which seemed to randomly fail, but at least showed that the images were okay.  Got some good, albeit short data on M33 and M1.  Both well framed in the 102.  At least with siril I can do something with it.

I had the dob setup out the front and took turns at Jupiter which was looking exceptional.  The seeing was great, not quite up to last month on Saturn but probly the best I've seen Jupiter looks in over a year.

All in all quite a good session, proved everything works on imaging, found the optimum spot in the garden for observing and accidently found a really good din red light in the form of my daughter's "Existential Dread Duck" night light which goes dim red if you plug him in to charge.  A nice low level light that isn't too bright when fully on.  Made from silicone too.

[Knighty2112]

Captured A3 comet near a lay-by at Market Weighton on Arras Hill on the A1079 Hull to York road. Single frame taken with Iphone at 19:46, and tweaked slightly on ipad.

Edited Tuesday at 02:11 by Knighty2112

[Knighty2112]

1 minute ago, Knighty2112 said:

Captured A3 comet near a lay-by at Market Weighton on Arras Hill on the A1079 Hull to York road. Single frame taken with Iphone at 19:46, and tweaked slightly on ipad.

 

[bosun21]

10 hours ago, Ratlet said:

in the form of my daughter's "Existential Dread Duck" night light

What will Astro biscuits "Bunny" have to say about this?

[Bivanus]

Well, after a fortuitous canceling of plans , I found myself driving rather fastish towards the western side of my beloved town , past the anti-astronomy barriers of high rise blocks and swerving thru the high voltage lines to a secluded parking lot on the ring highway where only me and about a dozen sleepy lorry drivers getting down for night rest got to see the comet. A tad later than previous days , it was not until 19:30 local time I managed to see it , but between my scope ( TS APO 80mm ) and a colleague binoculars (marine type, 10x50mm )  and everyone's cameras & smart phones  not one person missed it.

Sadly I forgot my filters at home so while the telescope view was clear , it was a tad on the not-impressive side , it was the binoculars that really raised to the occasion 🤩  

[SwiMatt]

Nice lunar session yesterday, although I forgot my stool so I needed to stand... I need to fortify my neck in order to minimize wobbles 😂

I had a nice look at a lot of features on the Eastern rim, in their Lunar 100 order: Aristarchus (L11), Gassendi (L13), Schröter Valley (L17), Aristarchus Plateau (L22), Schiller (L30), Grimaldi basin (L36), Bailly (L37), Schickard (L39), Wargentin (L43), Mersenius (L44), Crüger (L52), Reiner Gamma (L57), Rümker (L62), Sirsalis Rille (L77), Procellarum basin (L95) and Inghirami Valley (L97).

The most surprising for me was Wargentin, which lies just by the big crater Schickard: it was surprising because it's a crater but it's filled with lava, so it looked a lot like an elevated plateau, very nice. Rümker is also an interesting region, a dome with several peaks in an otherwise quite empty area. The hardest to see was Sirsalis Rille, of which I only saw the Southern part (the part South of the double crater Sirsalis), but I managed to perceive it clearly twice (in between moments of nothing) and it was an exciting result. Lovely lovely night!