Supermoon Eclipse 09/28/15

No civilizations were destroyed in the making of this eclipse.  Attempts with a 200mm zoom and a telescope with a T adapter.

Space

Took a little vacation and tried an experiment.

Pan-Starrs

I think my love of starry nights came from the same place my love of storms came from.  Summer Vacations.  On one summer vacation around midsummer many years ago, the park attendant mentioning a meteor shower that night.

It was probably one of the annual shows but I remember seeing the Milky Way (something that I now have to travel almost an hour away from Wichita to see), and a few shooting stars.  My father went back into the 5th wheel camper to get coffee and I looked up and saw an explosion of shooting stars emanating from a central point in the sky.  Since then, I've been drawn to go out and look up.

I started astrophotography last year with a new lens and a lack of storms in the area. I'm still amazed at what I can pick up with the camera and how bad light pollution is in the area.

Pan Starrs is a recently discovered comet that appeared in the month of March.  Most accounts is that it's barely visible in the nights sky with binoculars.  This March has been overcast and when it's been clear, there were clouds on the horizon preventing us from seeing it.  There were two nights I went out, and luckily, I found it with the camera on March 18th. Per Earthsky.org the comet is getting closer and may be slightly brighter at month's end.  Keep looking west at sundown for about an hour after and you may need binoculars to see it.

 

Falling Stars and City Lights

This last weekend was the return of the annual Perseid meteor shower.  Some rates included seeing up to 100 meteors per hour.  Unfortunately a small system moved in Saturday night causing cloud cover.  The site that I thought would have been light free apparently went through a mighty makeover and there was light pollution everywhere.

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 Heading back I took an HDR shot of Hillsboro's mean streets.

Dust on the lens, not a ghost.

The next night, I went a little closer to home and ended up in a fairly good spot.  A couple local grain elevators and cities caused some light pollution, but I could make out the Milky Way's faint arm.  A strange orange colored thunderstorm (I'm guessing heat lightning) pulled my attention to the North.  In the photo below, you can see it between the three trees.

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OZ?

One of the clearer space shots I've done.

 The last shot of space came out the best.  No shooting stars but lots of stars and a galaxy to boot.  I'm still playing with settings and thing I need to lower the ISO.  I also wish there was a great dark spot close to home so I could go out and wonder more often.

Billions and Billions of Stars

I went out to a nice location in the middle of nowhere last night and tried some more galactic photography.  Something odd was happening with the fisheye lens and I couldn't focus well.  These shots were taken near Marion Lake in Kansas.  These shots were taken looking to the north (hopefully glimpsing a little auroral activity.  You might see some streaks of light in the photos, these were satellites passing overhead.

The white haze in the photograph was the spiral arm of the milky way.

Train coming, not sure what city that was to the east of my location.  Maybe Peabody.

Train, may crop this, love how it lights up the trees.

strange effect with the fisheye lens.

More space

Don't be alarmed, the blog has not changed scope.  Learning a little elementary astrophotography.

Venus, Jupiter, and Moon

Venus

Mars (center) Satellite and plane 

New Camera

New camera is in my hands and a handy dandy lightning detector arrived as well.

Last night with after a week of nearly continuous rain, we had clear sky.  Just after sundown I went out and shot this off the deck.  I'm still a little too close to the city, but this gave me an idea what I can do.

There are several issues I realized.  I need a shutter release or timed release, I'm too close to city lights, out of focus but as stated, these are some of my first shots.  More to come on clear nights and when storms hit the area.

The bright spot on the picture is Venus, below in the tree is Jupiter.  Looking due west at 9:00pm.