The Road to GNTO...

I went out to GNTO last night to take advantage of the spectacular skies we seem to be having the last couple of nights, I decided to take the more scenic route driving through Isleta, Los Lunas and Belen and I am very glad that I did. The trees along the bosque are turning colors now and it is spectacular, what an amazing place we live in that we have this wonder of nature just outside our back doors. I have lived in New Mexico my entire life and it never ceases to amaze me how beautiful our little piece of the world is and how wonderful it is that we are blessed with the changing seasons and the cycles of life seen each season. I am not sure that the picture above gets even close to the amazing colors I was seeing on my drive out to GNTO, but what a wonderful way to begin an evening that would prove to be absolutely spectacular.

The Moon After...

Just kidding with the previous post, I really did not see anything either (NASA please do not start calling me and asking for my negatives or something).

This was an image I took early on in the evening (October 8th) as the moon was rising prior to the LCROSS mission, but trust me the moon looked the same when I put my telescope away at 6:00am on Friday. I was out at GNTO with 5 others and we had 3 telescopes equipped with video cameras, a 16" Dob with my camera attached to the eyepiece (5mm) set up in video mode recording and I was looking through the eyepiece of my 13" trying to see something with my own eyes, but to no avail. It may have been a somewhat disappointing event but I did have a lot of fun with the people there and look foreword to the next time we decide to throw something at the moon, I will be there with my scope to look again (I just hope the moon does not decide to throw something back).

Mushroom Moon...

As you may have heard, early Friday morning, NASA crashed a probe into the Moon to try and detect water on the moon. Several large telescopes and hundreds of small amateur telescopes were pointed at the Moon at 5:30am to try and catch a glimpse of something, hopefully the dust kicked up by the impact. While it was a lot of fun no one seemed to have seen anything, big sad, but what the heck, it was a chance we had to take.

As I was looking over some of the images I had taken during this event I found this one and what do you know I think I see some dust being kicked up, maybe I need to call NASA and let them know what I found, what do you think?

The Moon Before...

This is practice for the LCROSS mission this coming Friday. I am thinking that I am going to try and photograph the impact onto the moon. I am now trying to identify the area of the moon where the impact will take place. Once I have identified the location I will try and magnify the area as much as possible and will try and see how much of the event I can actually photograph. I am really hoping that this works because if I am photographing it I may not be able to see it so I will dependent on the camera catching the event for me to see afterwords.

Wish me luck, this is happening on Friday morning at 5:30am so it will hopefully be a good event, to make it worth getting up so early and standing in the chill to see something that may never happen again.

Nikon CoolPix S210, f5.9 1/17sec, ISO-400

Nikon CoolPix S210, f3.5 1/202 sec, ISO-64

Jumpin' Jupiter...

This image of Jupiter was taken at UNM Campus Observatory in my 13" Scope with the camera held (by adapter) at the eyepiece. It is slightly out of focus but you can easily see the banding on the planet but none of the moons showed up. This was the first time I have tried to take a picture of anything other than the Moon this way so I think it was a pretty cool picture.

Here is a photo taken a few moments later with Jupiter and 4 of its moons. The motion of the (earth) is evident when you zoom into the photo and you notice that none of the objects are circles they are all elongated because of the motion through the eyepiece.

Both images - Nikon CoolPix S210, f5.9, 1/2 sec, ISO-400

The UNM Campus Observatory is open to the public for viewing on Friday evenings and TAAS (The Albuquerque Astronomical Society) helps out by bringing some additional telescopes and setting them up for additional viewing options. I am the Coordinator for TAAS with UNM so I am usually there on Fridays with other TAAS members and we always make new Friends.

Shane is seen here with Sonya showing me were Jupiter is in the sky (or maybe it was just a star) but Sonya seen with her mom were visiting us from Oklahoma City, they were passing through on their way home from the Grand Canyon and we are glad to be able to call them friends now. We meet lots of new people at UNM on Friday nights and every now and then we meet some new friends and we are hoping to hear from Sonya and her family again soon.

Moonless Jupiter, but not earth!

Dancing Moon and Jupiter, trying to take pictures of the Moon and Jupiter in the night sky without a tripod is very difficult to do, this is the result of that effort.

Another post of the Moon taken using my Star Blaster Telescope 4.5" with the camera hand held up to the eyepiece. Both of these were taken on Wednesday evening when Jupiter lost its moons for a few hours (they were either in front of or behind the planet so you could not see them) it was a very impressive site and will not happen again for like 10 years or something, I had used the Moon as a finder when looking for Jupiter in my telescope. I did not take the time to attach the finder scope so I used the Bright Moon as a starting point to try and find Jupiter and it worked but I was a little distracted with how beautiful the moon was so I spent about 5 or 10 minutes looking at Jupiter and then spent the next 30 or 40 minutes looking at the Moon.

I really enjoy looking at the moon, and will start to learn some of the features of the moon by name.