Observing
Last night’s full moon was the smallest full moon of the year. We’ve heard it called the micro-moon ormini-moon. This March 5, 2015 full moon lies about 50,000 kilometers (30,000 miles) farther away from Earth than will the year’s closest full moon – the full supermoon and Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon – on September 28. The March 5 moon is the year’s farthest full moon because full moon and lunar apogee – the moon’s farthest point in its monthly orbit – both fall on the same date.
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A 22° halo is a halo, one type of optical phenomenon, forming a circle with a radius of approximately 22° around the Sun, or occasionally the Moon (also called a moon ring or winter halo). It forms as sunlight is refracted in millions of randomly oriented hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. The halo is large; the radius is roughly the size of an outstretched hand at arms length. As light passes through the 60° apex angle of the hexagonal ice prisms it is deflected twice resulting in deviation angles ranging from 22° to 50°. The angle of minimum deviation is almost 22° (or more specifically 21.84° on average; 21.54° for red light and 22.37° for blue light). This wavelength-dependent variation in refraction causes the inner edge of the circle to be reddish while the outer edge is bluish. As no light is refracted at angles smaller than 22° the sky is darker inside the halo. A 22° halo may be visible on as many as 100 days per year—much more frequently than rainbows.
My entire neighbourhood is surrounded by 80+ foot trees, so Tonight’s Spectacular Triple-play Conjunction is partially hidden by trees, however, I love the effect that I was able to achieve!
The Moon, Venus and Mars formed a beautiful grouping in the western sky above Hamilton tonight. It was well worth the risk of frostbite to view. I snapped this photo with a point & shoot camera from our driveway.
I turned to face north just before 7:00 pm to catch a very bright pass overhead by the International Space Station. I snapped a photo of the ISS (it’s the streak in the image below) as it passed Jupiter in the ESE.
Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) on January 13, 2015, approx. 7:30pm to 8:30pm from Caledonia ON.
I used my Canon 40D, Astronomik CLS light pollution clip-filter and my Tamron 300mm f/2.8 telephoto lens on my Super-Polaris EQ mount.
Settings: ISO 1600, f/2.8.
Post-processing included curves adjustments, colour balancing, and multiple iterations of layering, masking & blending to smooth out the head of the comet a little better.
Note the comet’s tail pointing downward as per the images’ orientation; eastward away from the sun’s direction.
The image on the left is a composite of 5 1-minute exposures and is stacked on the background stars. The image on the right is a composite of 8 1-minute exposures stacked on the head of the comet, hence the star trailing, indicating the comet’s direction. North is to the left in both images.
With -15° degree weather astrophotography in January is not for the faint of heart! However, with so few clear nights these past few months it’s worth braving the elements for a personal encounter with comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). Lovejoy is now naked eye visible but its very faint and hard to spot unless you know exactly where to look. From my somewhat light polluted skies in Dundas the comet can be seen as a tiny, dim dot right of Orion. With a telescope the view improves and using my 8″ scope Lovejoy can be seen as a fuzzy patch but unmistakable comet. With the wonders of auto-guiding, digital photography, and stacking software more detail can be explored through the photons captured by CCD sensor.
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Last night finally gave some decent skies, so I ventured out into my backyard on the West Mountain to take a peek at Comet Lovejoy(even though it was -15°). The comet is now visible to the naked eye even from moderately light polluted skies, and I imagine from a dark sky site it would look fantastic. The comet is moving higher and higher into the sky, and already has dropped below magnitude +5. Through my 10″ Dobsonian, the comet was certainly a treat. The coma is quite large and fades nicely into the background sky, while the nucleus is small, stellar and bright. A hint of a tail can even be seen running east from the nucleus (although it could just be averted imagination – more observations are needed to be sure). The picture below is an inverted sketch I made of Lovejoy last night – mainly from memory and a very rough initial sketch as I wasn’t willing to sit at the eyepiece for 45 minutes drawing at that temperature. I encourage anyone who can to go outside and take a peek at the comet through their scopes and binos, and at very least try and find it with the naked eye – here is a link to Sky and Telescope giving locations and descriptions!
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Last observation of 2014: Comet Lovejoy in Lepus. Comet appeared as a circular smudge in 7×50 binocs. No tail was visible. Comet is dimmer than magnitude 4.9
Happy New Year!
Not wanting to pass up a rare clear night, and despite the cold temperatures, I got out with my telescope and began with a below average view of the Orion nebula, due to light pollution from both the city and moon. I then went on to a spectacular view of Jupiter. The bands were detailed and the moons looked like little disks at 180x in my scope. Jupiter is always fascinating through a telescope, with the parade of constantly changing moons and the cloud bands swirling though new patterns all the time. I am looking forward to the upcoming months when Jupiter will be better placed and visible every night. Finally, I turned to the moon, as it was unavoidable on a night like tonight.
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Well, it’s been almost two months since I took a picture of the Moon, and you’re probably saying to yourself, “Gee, I wonder if John is feeling all right.” Not wanting you to think that there’s something wrong with me, here is a shot of the moon that I took tonight. Yup, John’s a geek and all is right in his world. Now, go outside and look at how beautiful the moon is.