{"id":1815,"date":"2018-10-24T10:16:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T10:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2018-10-24T10:21:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T10:21:58","slug":"22nd-october-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/22nd-october-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"A nice evening (and day) of Observing. 22nd October 2018."},"content":{"rendered":"

The day was bright and clear. The Sun was shining and it looked like it would be a good evening to eventually try and capture a reasonable image of Mars, and do some lunar imaging before it got too full as well. In the end it turned out to be\u00a0a very productive night (and day).<\/p>\n

More of my images are on my Flickr Site:
\nhttps:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/eagleseyeonthesky<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I was quite busy that day, (life seems to have picked up big time since I “retired”, but I’m certainly not complaining), but after making the regular trip to the post office to send out some books, on the way back I decided to get the scope out that afternoon to see if I could capture Venus in the bright daylight sky. It was only 4 days before the planet reached inferior conjunction (27th October). At the time I was hunting it down, it was just 9\u00b0 from the Sun, and only about 14\u00b0 above my horizon.<\/p>\n

It was certainly going to be a challenge. Luckily towards the South, there is a gap between the neighbours houses, so I had a bit of a chance. I put the 120mm Evostar refractor onto the mount and centred it on The Sun. Once I knew the light from the Sun was passing centrally through the scope, using the computer, I calibrated the mounts position on the Sun. I then sent the scope to the position of Venus. It took me quite a while to get the scope focused (as I hadn’t viewed the Sun directly) and Venus centred, but when I did, a wonderfully thin crescent presented itself, bubbling and bouncing away in the afternoon atmospheric turbulence. It was extremely bright and so beautiful to see.<\/p>\n

After viewing for a short time, I attached my DSLR and captured a few images of Venus, to make sure I bagged at least one image.<\/p>\n

Single DSLR Image of Venus. 120mm Evostar refractor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once happy I had captured a couple of acceptable images, I removed the camera and attached my ZWO ASIU120MC camera to try and take a better image. Getting the planet focused and centred on the camera chip again was even more challenging. But finally I managed to get the crescent in focus and processed to capture some avi’s. About an hour after I started, I watched as Venus slowly disappeared behind my neighbours house.<\/p>\n

Processed avi image of Venus.\u00a0120mm Evostar refractor, ZWO ASIU120MC camera.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

True to the weather forecast, for once, later in the day the skies stayed clear as the sky darkened. I set myself up near the house, so that I could get on Mars as soon as it got dark. I would have to wait until later when it passed through that gap, had I stayed where the pier is set.
\nI set my Celestron C11 on the mount and took a number of AVI’s of Mars.<\/p>\n

Mars – C11 and\u00a0ZWO ASIU120MC camera.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is about the best image I could manage, given the small size of the disk and very wobbly seeing just above the neighbours roof.<\/p>\n

By the time I finished on Mars, The Moon was now quite high in the sky, so then concentrated my efforts on imaging that. Despite a large, bright gibbous phase, some nice features were picked out nicely along the terminator.<\/p>\n

The very bright crater Aristarchus and Schroter’s Valley.<\/strong>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Craters Pythagoras and Babbage .\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Lunar Swirl Reiner Gamma and craters Hevelius and Cavalerius.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Bright ejecta rays around crater Kepler.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Colour saturated ejecta rays around crater Tycho.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day was bright and clear. The Sun was shining and it looked like it would be a good evening to eventually try and capture a reasonable image of Mars, and do some lunar imaging before it got too full as well. In the end it turned out to be\u00a0a very productive night (and day). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"A nice evening (and day) of Observing. 22nd October 2018. - Star-Gazing","description":"The day was bright and clear. The Sun was shining and it looked like it would be a good evening to eventually try and capture a reasonable image of Mars, and do"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1820,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions\/1820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}