A clear moonless night offered a chance to capture some Geminid meteor trails. A few showed up during this two-hour exposure between 9 and 11 pm, but nothing spectacular.
Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + Leica 9mm f/1.7 lens. Location: Santa Fe back yard.
Sadly, I am now back in Santa Fe for the winter. Today was relatively warm (10–20 deg F warmer than Creede) and sunny, so solar photography was an obvious choice for experimenting with some new equipment configurations.
Equipment: TS-Optics 50mm ED f/4 refractor, Lunt Solar Wedge, Baader Solar Continuum Filter, ZWO ASI178mm monochrome camera, and Sightron Japan Alt-Az mount.
Here is what the equipment setup looks like:
Based on the ephemeris value for the sun's diameter (1945 arcsec) and the measured pixel width (839 pixels) of the solar image, the derived focal length for this scope is 213 mm, which would make it f/4.3.
The full moon occurred Thursday (04 Dec), but on Friday night it was still 98% illuminated. These images were captured with Olympus cameras and an AT80EDT refractor and a Laowa 7.5mm f/2 lens.
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| Cold Moon encore over Snowshoe Mountain, 05 Dec. |
There were some thin clouds visible near the northern horizon, but it didn't look like they would be a problem. This is how it looked at the beginning of a planned 2-hr star-trail exposure:
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| Laowa 7.5mm, 10 sec. |
The full moon of December is traditionally called the "Cold Moon". An appropriate nickname - the temperature is already in the single-digits Fahrenheit two hours before midnight. This year it is also a perigean full moon (aka "super moon"), so it is noticeably brighter than average.
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| Cold Moon rising over Snowshoe Mountain, 04 December. |
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| Cold Moon illumination. Laowa 7.5mm f/2 lens, 2-hr live composite. |
A large sunspot group is traversing the sun.
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| White light. AT80EDT refractor + Lunt solar wedge. |
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| Hydrogen-Alpha light. Lunt LS50THa with double-stacked etalons. |
Even though it is winter, heat currents in the air make it difficult to get sharp single images of the sun during the middle of the day.
The landscape was lit up by the 11.6-day moon. There was a gusty wind blowing, which required the camera to be set up on the leeward side of a shed for protection. Temperature was 11° F heading toward an eventual low of 1.4° F the next morning.
Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens.
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| 2-hr live composite mode |
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| 1-hr live composite. |
A large sunspot group has just rotated into view. This group is so large that it was visible to the NASA Perserverance Rover on Mars, which was not designed for high-resolution solar observation. Who knows, more northern-lights displays may be in our near future.
Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + AT80EDT refractor + Lunt Solar Wedge + ND0.6 filter.
There were some thin clouds, mostly to the south, that had the potential to ruin this 78-min exposure. However, it looks like it was mostly successful. The landscape was illuminated by the first-quarter moon.
Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens.
The official start of winter is more than three weeks away, but the winter constellations are now rising above Snowshoe Mountain in the late evening. Shortly after moonset on Tuesday the measured sky brightness was 21.38 mpsas.
Two cameras were used for these images: Olympus E-M1iii + Leica 15mm f/1.7 lens + Hoya Sparkle-6 filter, and Sony A7iii + Sony FE 50mm f/1.8 lens + Hoya Softon filter.
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| Jupiter (left) and Orion rising. Leica 15mm. |
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| Orion. Sony 50mm. |
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| Jupiter, Castor and Pollux. Sony 50mm. |
The view to the south featured the less-impressive constellation Cetus. However, this constellation contains a nearby star, Tau Ceti (τ Ceti), that is only 11.9-ly distant and the 19th closest star system. Notably, it is also the seventh-nearest naked-eye star.
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| Tau Ceti (circled) and Saturn (upper right corner). Leica 15mm. |
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| A closer look. Sony 50mm |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| Neptune (circled) and Saturn. |
These pictures were obtained near 8:30 pm last night with the temperature in the low 20's F. The eventual low was about 5° F the next morning. Temperatures this low are a problem for doing polar alignment of the star tracking mount, because the green laser that is used for lining up on Polaris does not work well in the cold.
The camera used was a Sony A7iii + Rokinon AF 85mm f/1.4 FEII lens + Hoya Softon filter. The measured sky brightness was sqml=21.31 mpsas. Some faint red airglow was evident at lower elevations.
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| Lyra |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| Cassiopeia |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| Perseus |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| Auriga |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| The Pleiades, Hyades, and Uranus (circled) |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
There is a 3.5-inch blanket of new snow on the ground this morning (Sunday). Last night started out clear, with a nice view of the 2.8-day crescent moon during twilight.
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| Olympus E-M5iii + 40-150mm f/4. |
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| Olympus E-M1iii + 12mm f/2 + Hoya Sparkle-6 filter. |
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| Vega and Epsilon Lyrae (upper right). Rokinon 135mm f/2. |
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| Epsilon Lyrae. Full image area. North to the right. GSO Cassegrain. |
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| Epsilon Lyrae, a closer look. North is up. |
Each of the two stars seen here is also a double star, hence the nickname "Double Double". Resolving the two tight pairs requires good optics and high magnification (about 100x or more).
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| Albireo. Full image area. North to the right. GSO Cassegrain. |
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| Albireo, a closer look. North is up. |
Albireo is famous for the contrasting colors of the two stars: golden and blue.
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| 61 Cygni. Full image area. North to the right. GSO Cassegrain. |
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| 61 Cygni, a closer look. North is up. |
61 Cygni is known as the "Flying Star" because of its large proper motion (movement relative to the background stars). This rapid movement is related to its close distance: 11.4 ly. It is the 12th closest star system.
The image quality from the 4.5-inch Cassegrain is less than I would like. There is some asymmetry to the star images that indicates a probable collimation issue. I'll have to work on that some day. For now, this scope is going into the closet.
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| GSO 4.5-inch Classical Cassegrain |
