Sunday, September 27, 2015

Really Cloudy Full Lunar Eclipse

So, what I can say...
No surprises. It was like any other Lunar Eclipse in Maryland - very cloudy.

Thanks we had wonderful worm weather with no rain and no wind.
Also, we could see at least something.

Here is the Moon right before the Eclipse.


Eclipse just started.


Going for the full coverage.


Getting little bit closer


Very close....


Almost there...


The very last light of the Old Moon:


And here it is. Full Eclipse.




Saturday, September 19, 2015

Observe the Moon Night 2015

Just came from the event.
It was easy to post pictures from it.

Tom was serving in the Observatory.

Jim was doing Planetarium presentation:

I've captured the audience way before the beginning. I believe there was almost full house. 

Parking was almost full

 And after planetarium presentation was done there was a long line to see the Moon in the Telescope.

Tom shows the Moon to the audience.

People are gathering outside and waiting for their turn to enter.

It was pretty cloudy night and only the Moon was in good visibility. Tom tried to show the Andromeda Galaxy, but Moon was definitely better object that night.

I was bored and just played around.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Resolved Uranus, Neptune, their moons and lost Pluto.

Last Monday and Tuesday I've made so many pictures that I'll need a lot of space here.
That will be the first post in the series.

Will stat from Uranus. It is visible right now and is located near ΞΆ (Zeta) of Pisces (bright object in the center).


That would be extremely hard to identify it if possible at all, but fortunately for me I did pictures for two nights in a row and could track changes and compare them:
As you can see, Uranus changed it's position over 24 hours and it's moons as well. I could separate 3 of them. Can't tell which ones are which, but there are most probably visible Oberon, Titania and maybe Umbriel.

Much more difficult was to notice move of Neptune (dot in the center).

It did almost unnoticeable move, but besides the move you can see the move of it's Moon Triton.

Unfortunately Pluto is so far away that I couldn't resolve it's move. It is somewhere on the picture below.