Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Latest Observations






The weather is getting colder, but viewing of celestial objects is getting better with lowered humidity in the atmosphere.
Images 1 thru 5 are some of my latest astronomic observations.
Image-1: I'm glad to see Mars rising earlier in the evening. I should have some opportunities to view the ice-capped poles and if I'm lucky view some terrain features. More to follow in a future post ...

Image-1 was taken on 11-16-07 at 9:04PM.
Weather: Partly Cloudy, 50F
Method: Piggy Back on ETX-125
Camera: Nikon D80
ISO Speed: 400
Lens: 50mm
F-Number: F/1.8
Exposure: 8 Seconds

Image-2: M45 Pleiades is the most brilliant open cluster that can be seen with the naked eye. I hope to capture more pictures of this Messier Object in future photo sessions.

Image-2 was taken on 11-16-07 at 9:45PM.
Weather: Partly Cloudy, 50F
Method: Piggy Back on ETX-125
Camera: Nikon D80
ISO Speed: 400
Lens: 50mm
F-Number: F/1.8
Exposure: 8 Seconds

Images 3 & 4: [Image 3 is an untouched picture of the constellation Orion. Image 4 was a modified image of the same picture to include boxes around major stars and objects in Orion.]

The constellation Orion is one of the easiest objects to identify in the sky. Orion contains M42 (Orion Nebula) IC434 Horsehead Nebula, along with M43, M78 and NGC2024 (Flame Nebula). The Orion nebula gas field is the most active star forming region in our stellar neighborhood. If I get some good viewing/imaging sessions, I’ll dedicate an entire BLOG post to Orion.

Here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry for the constellation Orion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)

Images 3 & 4 were taken on 11-27-07 at 9:45PM.
Weather: Clear, 29F
Method: Piggy Back on ETX-125
Camera: Nikon D80
ISO Speed: 800
Lens: 50mm
F-Number: F/2.8
Exposure: 8 Seconds

Image-5 is my latest photograph of comet 17P Holmes. The bright star below the comet is Mirfak, which is the brightest star in the constellation Perseus.

Images-5 was taken on 11-27-07 at 9:32PM.
Weather: Clear, 29F
Method: Piggy Back on ETX-125
Camera: Nikon D80
ISO Speed: 1600
Lens: 70-300mm @ 155mm
F-Number: F/4.8
Exposure: 30 Seconds

Hope you're enjoying the pictures!

Star Pilot

3 comments:

United Studies said...

You need to find a place to submit these pictures...they are really great. :-)

Kim Dyrholm Kristiansen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kim Dyrholm Kristiansen said...

Nice images Jim, do you ever wonder if we are alone? :)

I was disgussing astrology with a co-worker og mine the other day. About whether or not the earth actually is slowing down. I know there is something called leep-second which compensates for the slowdown and found these link
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie005.html
http://pages.prodigy.com/suna/earth.htm Which briefly states the facts.

A pretty interesting read in my opinion.