AstroNerd

Stargazing at the Willard! This event was held at the rooftop bar called the Willard, at the AC Hotel in downtown Raleigh, NC. This event is put on by the Raleigh Astronomy Club (RAC). I volunteered not only as a member of the club but also as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

It was a mostly clear night tonight up until around 9pm when a haze and thin upper clouds began to move in. We had approximately 25 people stop by to observe the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, the Pleiades (M45), The Orion Nebula (M42) and the open cluster M41. We were just a few miles from the path of the Moon/Pleiades occultation and hence missed it. Despite the cold the people who came out to observe were happy and enthusiastic.

It was an awesome week at the Fall Staunton River Star Party! Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were all great observing nights. Early Tuesday evening started clear but clouds and brief shower provided enough of a break for a community movie viewing - the clouds broke sometime after 1am and remained clear. Saturday night was pretty much a wash out though I was able to get in a few views of M31 and the Double Cluster with the binoculars I won as a door prize.

Friday evening was public night and we had an estimated 250 people show up to observe along with us. I had about 60 folks come by and look at M31 the Andromeda Galaxy and I answered lots of questions about galaxies, distances and astronomy equipment.

Saturday we had a very strange cloud formation overhead - around 3:50pm. No one really knew what is was or what it was called. I'm not saying it was aliens but it certainly looked like a big flying saucer had flown through the clouds.

I got lots of observing in with my CPC1100 at f/10, f/3.3 and f/2 as well as my SQA55 wide field set up.

As part of NASA's Hubble's Night Sky Challenge that is celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, I've created a YouTube series that will will cover a specific aspect of the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) in each episode and also contain comparisons of HST images with what is possible with amateur equipment using a technique called EAA (Electronically Assisted Astronomy).

Check out the first episode on my YouTube page:

Hubble Space Telescope - 35th Anniversary Celebration: Episode 1 This is the first video in a series celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope as part of NASA’s Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge. Each epis...

On Monday evening, I captured a rather cool event, the Moon moved in front of Mars, blocking our view (from North America) of the red planet. I put together this video of images I captured with my telescope. I hope you enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/Z9sv9fuI2EA

For several weeks now and for several more, from our vantage point on Earth, 6 planets are visible in the evening sky, from West to East - Venus, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter and Mars. Mercury and Pluto are obscured by the glare of the Sun and I was not able to see them.

Depending on where you are located and your local horizons, Venus may be obscured before Mars is visible - see the screen shot provided from the Sky Safari app to see the location of the 6 planets.

I was able to get individual images of each the 6 visible planets starting at just after 6pm and up until a little before 10pm. I lost a little more than an hour due to clouds rolling in around 8:30pm. Check out my collage of photos I'm calling the Parade of Planets.

For those interested in the equipment and techniques used, read on.

I captured the images using a ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera through my wedge mounted CPC 1100 telescope (11" Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope). The image train was set at f/10.

I used a fairly new feature within the software program called SharpCap to 'live stack' around 1,000 images of each planet. These images were around 30 milliseconds for the brighter planets and 200 milliseconds for the dimmer planets. The soft allowed me to view and tweak the images in real time as they were coming through the scope and camera on to the computer. There is no post processing of any of these images other than cropping to fit into the collage.

Here are some of my favorite views/observations from my week at the Staunton River Star party this past week. I was able to record 26 observations towards the various Astronomical League programs I'm working on.