Venus 26th April 2015

Venus taken with my Canon 600D DSLR camera attached to my Meade 127mmm Apo Refractor with a Televue 3x Barlow lens.

 
In April of this year Venus has been sufficiently high in the sky to clear the roof of the rear extension to our house, as a consequence, I managed to image Venus using my largest telescope for the first time.  My previous images of Venus were all captured using my 90mm. Maksutov telescope.

Sadly, the dense Venusian cloud tops show very little detail other than subtle variations in shading.

Venus, the Moon and Aldebaran the bulls eye

Looking west over the garden fence. The crescent Moon with earthshine illuminating the remainder of the earth facing surface and sitting just above the orange supergiant star Aldeberan (alpha tauri). Venus shining brightly above my neighbour's television aerial.

When I went to put some dishes in the dishwasher I noticed the crescent moon through a west facing window.  I quickly located the wherabouts of my DSLR and managed to capture not only the moon but also Venus and the star Aldebaran. I braced the telephoto lens of my camera on the top of my neighbour's fence and handheld an exposure of 1/15th of a second. No mean effort for a shakey old man!

Ganymede - largest moon in the solar system

Jupiter at 21.00 UTC on the 14th April 2015 - taken with my 127mm Meade Refractor and Canon 600D DSLR camera.

Jupiter's largest Galilean moon, Ganymede can be seen in the above image as a small black dot, transiting Jupiter's disc.  Io, the innermost and volcanically active Galilean moon,  can be seen just to Jupiter's lower left.  Europa can be seen further out.   I could see Callisto further out still but this moon was outside the field of view captured by my camera.

Completing an orbit in roughly seven days, Ganymede participates in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively. It has a diameter of 5,268 km (3,273 mi), 8% larger than that of the planet Mercury, but has only 45% of the latter's mass. Its diameter is 2% larger than that of Saturn's Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system. It also has the highest mass of all planetary satellites, with 2.02 times the mass of our Moon.

  

Ganymede has a magnetosphere, which implies the presence of a liquid iron core. The moon is comprised of silicate rocks and water ice and has a surface pocked with impact craters,. It is also considered likely that Ganymede hosts a subterranean salt water sea which along with Europa's subsurface ocean may harbour primitive extra terrestrial life.

Ganymede - Credit NASA Galileo Orbiter

Credits: Wikipedia and NASA

The Grey Seal Colony at Horsey Gap Norfolk UK

 

Normally grey seals come to Horsey Beach to breed and stay between November and February.  This year is exceptional in that the seals have come in much greater numbers and have stayed at the beach throughout March.


The grey seal is one of the largest marine mammals found in the waters around the United Kingdom and approximately half the world's population are found in Britain.  The Horsey Colony is located at one of the  most accessible mainland sites and is where you may see grey seal pups in family groups.

Toot and I spent a great morning with four of our grandchildren walking through the marram grass and along the beach. We saw literally hundreds of seals swimming in the North Sea and sunbathing in a 5 mete wide strip of sand next to the breaking surf.  We observed them and they observed us.  Interesting and interested mammalian family groups ! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_seal

Eclipse the Movie

I really enjoyed the eclipse so I decided to make a movie from the still images I captured on the morning of the 20th of March 2015 from a field just outside Holbeach Lincolnshire UK.

I also discovered that my camera had captured a sunspot. How good is that!

Chasing the Eclipse in Lincolnshire

Gedney Church on the Horizon with the eclipse well underway in fog and cloud - composite image

 Toot  checked the weather forecast for Lowestoft last night - heavy cloud to midday!  So it was an early morning call at 4.00am and off to Lincolnshire our potential window on the partial solar eclipse. When we arrived at our chosen viewing site, just around the corner from 'The Chestnut Tearooms' in Holbeach, it was 7.30 am and the weather was not promising. It was very cold, a bit foggy and clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. I set up my tripod and camera with a telephoto lens at f=300mm. protected with a mylar film white light filter.  Ever so slowly the clouds thinned and the fog lifted.  By the time the moon covered 85% of the solar disc the sky was clear other than a little high level haze.

Toot and I had a great time, the photographer from the local paper took our photographs in front of my camera/tripod and afterwards we had a nice breakfast at the tea rooms.

Early days before the clouds parted

Eclipse maximum

Images taken at various times during the eclipse

Thanks Toot for a great day!  We should sleep well tonight!

Dawn on Ceres

The individual images which make up this fascinating animated picture were taken in February by NASA's space probe DAWN.  It shows the asteroid Ceres in greater detail than has ever been seen before.  The two glowing 'eyes' in the large crater just above the equator are real and not some camera artifact. The burning question is 'what are they'?

The DAWN spacecraft is using its 'Ion Drive' to spiral  into low orbit around Ceres so more detailed images and analysis will soon be available. Whats for sure is Ceres is significantly different from Vesta the last asteroid visited by DAWN. Vesta is a dry lifeless cratered rock whilst a number of indicators hint at the presence of vast quantities of water below the surface of Ceres.

My guess is the 'bright eyes' are created by sunlight reflected from the shiny surface of water ice but who knows, they could be an enigmatic message left by some alien life form who visited our solar system aeons ago?  Wouldn't it be great if it were the latter rather than the former?

Credits:\NASAJPL-Caltech UCLA MPSDLRIDA
 

 Update 26th April 2015

I was interested to see the recent NASA post of a cylindrical map projection of coloured images taken by the Dawn probe in March 2015 and just prior to entering orbit around Ceres. The coloured images indicate changes in surface rock types and mineralogy.  I have taken and processed similar images of our moon to show variations in mineral morphology. You can see the crater with the two bright spots. I wondered whether the increased light reflective nature of the surface in this area is related to the presence of glassy rock?  Micro glassy spheres were found by astronauts when they visited our moon and I have some Obsidian samples, a naturally ocurring volcanic glass. Obsidian forms when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystalisation.  Of course glass like materials can also be formed when rocks are melted by the impact of meteors e.g the tektites found on earth in the viscinity of impact craters.

Dawn is now in orbit around Ceres and has commenced detailed scientific investigations on April the 23rd, so my above wild speculations may or may not be found to be correct!

This map-projected view of Ceres was created from images taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft during its initial approach to the dwarf planet, prior to being captured into orbit in March 2015.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA