April 8, 2024

We lucked out for the April 8th total solar eclipse! Here’s a preview.

2023 Annular Eclipse

75% probability of clouds – it wasn’t looking good for this annular eclipse on October 14th. But a family outing and dubious camera lens saved the day.

GPS Redux – The Light Pipe Update

Time for another equipment update. The GPS receiver flipped out again and I had to reset it. Seems like a good time to add a light pipe!

An asteroid and meeting new friends

A screen shot form George’s computer, showing the path of the asteroid occultation.

Closing in

Saturn orbits the Sun in about 29 1/2 years and as it does, we see the rings from different orientations. Sadly, the rings are closing up from our vantage point and in fact, they will be almost edge-on in 2025 and will appear to almost disappear. So catch ’em while you can!

Impromptu Solar Observing

I stopped by the Farmer’s Market today at Marcy Field and decided to pull out the telescope for some solar observing. I still had all my equipment in the car from observing Saturn earlier in the week (another post to follow on that). In any case, it was quite a beautiful day. Lots of curious market shoppers stopped by to peer through the CPC-800 and not a one left with boiled eyeballs.

Space Dandelion

Appearing as if ready to spread seeds to the wind, this globular cluster is M92 some 27 thousand light-years distant. I took this shot at Norton Cemetery on the night of August 23.

A long Time Ago – In a Galaxy Not So far Away…

Only 21 million light years away, that is…21 million years ago – all was well until it wasn’t. One day brought on SN 2023ixf – a supernova explosion in the Pinwheel Galaxy – M101. We humans are just seeing it now.

Friday night at the Whirlpool

I can never seem to get enough of M51, the beautiful Whirlpool Galaxy, and it was irresistible on another Friday night impromptu stargazing session.

Hunting the Hunter

I couldn’t believe it – finally a chance to catch the great Orion Nebula whilst still in the early springtime sky. The Orion Nebula has been an elusive object. It’s one of the first deep sky objects I tried photographing through my new CPC-800 telescope in 2015. And I did manage to grab a marginally […]