This image released by NASA in Washington on September 9, 2009, a portrait of Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. These Hubble observations are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations. NASA astronauts installed the camera during a servicing mission in May to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope.
Amateur Astronomy Sky this Week
Well not this week as you read this, but it was this week when it first went out and I think the Amateur Astronomy video is well worth watching now
The Homemade Dobsonian Telescope is great for Amateur Astronomy
10″ f4.7 primary mirror. Fully manual operation. webjones bought the mirrors, focuser, and finder, but built the rest with materials readily available at Home Depot or Lowe’s. A carpenter working on new homes (back in Mississippi) graciously donated some scraps of 3/4″ cabinet-grade plywood, which I believe is birch. A full accounting of the project can be found at webjones.net/telescope_v1
Uploaded by webjones on 19 Aug 06, 10.29PM GMT.
Excellent use of materials for Amateur Astronomy
Venus has been a special star or rather planet recently not so much for being in conjunction with other bodies but for being particularly bright in the afternoon sky. This is because of the eliptical orbit which has seen Venus rise much higher than normal.
h3_six is sure there are much better photos of this event but still quite likes this one with lights in the tree and in the sky.
For more photographs of the conjunction suggests searching flickr for “Venus, Moon and Jupiter” and Venus occultation.
There was a Harvest Moon last night again, beautiful.
That big fat moon;s gonna shine like a spoon and we’re gonna let it, we won’t regret it.
This is a single capture from August 2006, about one year ago. It’s all a bit technical so maybe not exactly astronomy for beginners
This capture is taken with a LX10 meade fork and an astrocamera Baker-Schmidt d=20cm focal=400mm f/2 using my old Canon EOS 300D
exposure: 253 seconds – ISO 200
processing with Deepskystacker 2.6.3
raw processing:
Bayer matrix (no interp.)
stacking:
light – entropy weighted average (high dynamic range)
darkframe – auto adaptive weighted average by xamad
M45 is a spectacular naked eye cluster and a photographic showpiece in Taurus. In western cultures it is popularly known as the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. In Japan, it is known as Subaru, and a stylized version of this cluster forms the Japanese car company’s logo.
Radio astronomy on a scale such as this is probably beyond the means of amateur astronomers.
