Jupiter Io and Callisto

Io transits the face of Jupiter, Callisto centre right

Using the camera I fashioned from an old and no longer used webcam, I captured video streams of the planet Jupiter through my Meade 127mm refracting telescope. I then used Registax and Photoshop software  to manipulate and stack the data to create these two images. The night of the 14th.of January was particularly clear and really cold.  I guess I'm becoming a fair weather astronomer!

Wedding in the Park

Reflections on a brilliant wedding

The Cabine saw little action over the Christmas holiday period so it made a nice change to spend the day using Photoshop to produce  a composite image from three of the photographs I took in Central Park and one that Toot took at Mark and Jacki's wedding reception at the Loeb Boat House.

Toronto

I really liked this building, trapped in a web of tram-lines but in architectural terms more than holding its own with the much newer hi-rise that forms the photographic backdrop. Great street theatre!

A Great Christmas and a Happy New Year

"All me ducks in a row" pastel on glass paper

Early in December the Cabine saw action as I worked up this pastel drawing of Toot with Alice, William and Chrissy bathing in the North Sea off Lowestoft Beach. Toot says that her bottom was not as large as this in the nineteen-eighties! The life of an amateur artist is fraught with danger!

"Christmas would not be Christmas without":

"A visit to Derbyshire and a hearty meal at the Hardwick Inn with family"

"A Christmas project assisted by Bimbar"

"Scaling the delights of the 'Everest' with our friends in Sheffield"

"Family fun with children and grandchildren at Will and Rachel's home"

"The annual appearance of the Beijing Spruce"

"A close encounter with Santa Claus"

"Barry the Snowman setting up office in the garden"

God bless us everyone!

Sixty something years, boy, architect and old chuffer

The Pleiades in my Backyard

Had a a great Birthday Weekend! and a wonderful french supper tonight for a treat. Brancaster mussels cooked in white wine with added chopped parsley and home grown onions. Rustic french bread and butter with sea-salt crystals from the Camargue. A selection of soft and hard cheeses. A toffee apple and pecan pie with cream. A bottle of Sancerre Sauvignon Blanc. Coffee and cognac. Delicious!!!! Thanks for a fine day Toot!

Backyard Astronomer

Capella in Auriga

Last night and the night before Toot and I were out in the garden after midnight looking for Leonid meteors, sadly only a few were seen and none photographed. A meteor hunters life is often full of disappointment! On the plus side the night was good for star gazing subject to the restrictions of the light from a waning moon. I also managed to find on the Internet some excellent freeware astro-imaging software. Combine this with a large number of 20-second exposure light frames using my SLR with an EFS18-55mm lens add a little Photoshop etc. and voila a nice photograph of the constellation Auriga the Charioteer.Cabine du Jardin deux - Backyard Astronomer

Hide and seek Asteroids and Cassiopeia Queen of the Sky

Radar Image of Asteroid 2005 YU55- courtesy of NASA

Having returned from a brilliant holiday and clear skies in Canada and America, I hurried to set up my telescope in order to photograph the asteroid 2005 YU55 as it sped between the Moon and Earth at 29,000 mph.  At its nearest the asteroid passed only 239,000 miles from  the Earth. No other asteroid is known to come closer until the year 2028 ( By which time I will be eighty years old if still alive and snapping!). You can imagine how miffed I was when the clouds blew in off the sea and ruined any attempt to view, let alone image, the asteroid.

To cheer myself up I used Deep-sky Stacker, Photoshop and Neat Image, to enhance  photographs of the open star cluster Messier 39 in the constellation Cygnus which I took in September from garden with my Canon EOS 400D camera.

Messier 39

M31 The Andromeda Galaxy



M31 and M32 in the Constellation of Andromeda

Took my first astro-photo of an object outside the Milkyway. The night I took this was a bit cloudy and this image is the combination of only four light frames (4x20 secs). Consquently, I am quite pleased that I was able to tease out some detail of the galaxy core showing hints of the spiral arms and dust lanes.
You can also see the gravitationly linked elliptical galaxy M 32 which is part of the Andromeda Group our nearest galactic neighbours.

Andromeda is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, which consists of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 other smaller galaxies. Although the largest, Andromeda may not be the most massive, as recent findings suggest that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and may be the most massive in the grouping. The 2006 observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that M31 contains one trillion (10¹²) stars, at least twice more than the number of stars in our own galaxy, which is estimated to be c. 200–400 billion.

Andromeda is estimated to be 7.1×10¹¹ solar masses. In comparison a 2009 study estimated that the Milky Way and Andromeda are about equal in mass,^] while a 2006 study put the mass of the Milky Way at ~80% of the mass of Andromeda. The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are expected to collide in perhaps 4.5 billion years.