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 […]

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Martian fly-by

One reason I don’t observe from home often is the narrow swath of clear sky I have through my wooded lot, even in the best conditions. But here, I caught Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) just in time!

The Green Comet

…As referred to by the current news articles. But casting ones gaze through binoculars and even my 8″ telescope yielded C/2022 E3 (ZTF) as – a fuzzy gray star. Good thing camera’s see in the dark!

The Planets Are Back!

It’s September 2022 and the planets are back! Well, at least at a reasonable hour. I posted a Jupiter image in the previous blog entry but I was up pretty late to catch that. Saturn is high in the sky at around 11:00 PM now, with Jupiter a couple of hours behind, and Mars after that. I got one of my best images yet of Saturn.

A perfect night at the cemetery

Nice weather returned to the cemetery for the evening of August 19, 2022. With the moon nowhere in sight and Saturn now plainly visible just after dark. And – with Jupiter in tow a couple of hours later – it was about as perfect a night as we get.