Astro-Image of the Day: Moon at its biggest of the year for 2009 on Saturday

Remember last month's post about the Moon being at perigee, its closest to the Earth? Well, it's about to happen again this month: Two perigee full Moons in two months! Wow!

Click the image to see the story.

A perigee Moon appears 14% wider and 30% brighter than a normal full Moon, so if it's been seeming really big and bright while waxing over the last week, that's because it has been growing in size from our perspective. (No, Virginia, it doesn't actually gain mass or volume. It's just closer, and closer looks bigger.) And you know that cool thing where the Moon looks huge as it rises from objects along the horizon? Well, it'll appear even more bigger-er!

Click the image to see the story.

Enjoy! If it's clear, I'll try to take some new astrophotos through my 'scope.

Chris

Astro-Image of the Day: Moon at its biggest of the year for 2009 on Saturday

Remember last month's post about the Moon being at perigee, its closest to the Earth? Well, it's about to happen again this month: Two perigee full Moons in two months! Wow!

Click the image to see the story.

A perigee Moon appears 14% wider and 30% brighter than a normal full Moon, so if it's been seeming really big and bright while waxing over the last week, that's because it has been growing in size from our perspective. (No, Virginia, it doesn't actually gain mass or volume. It's just closer, and closer looks bigger.) And you know that cool thing where the Moon looks huge as it rises from objects along the horizon? Well, it'll appear even more bigger-er!

Click the image to see the story.

Enjoy! If it's clear, I'll try to take some new astrophotos through my 'scope.

Chris

Bonus Astro-Image of the Day: A Flight to the Nearest Star

Here's my newest astrophoto taken with the Meade telescope. I took this one as part of a test to see if the changes I made to the drive's setup yesterday helped tracking. Unfortunately, soon after setting up the telescope and assorted electronics, I discovered that there's no Sun setting in the system. WTF? So I had to manually set it up using a compass and level. Seriously. Anyhow, the results don't really tell me much, because part of today's manual setup required pointing to two stars that I couldn't see, what with it being daytime and all. *sigh*

So I got results similar to the Moon shots: Once again, the drive didn't track correctly. Even more disappointing is that, through the eyepiece, I couldn't spot any sunspots or any other details, just a big, over-bright orb of Sun-ness.

(At this point you might be wondering why I'm not blind. Of course I used a full-aperture solar filter! Never point optics at the Sun without a true solar filter that covers all of the primary end of the instrument.)

Still, I thought it might be fun to once again image the movement and make an animated GIF to offer y'all what feels like a flight over the Moon! Here's a still from the animated GIF (which you can see under the cut):



During image processing on my computer is where I got really excited. Notice the detail you can see beyond the bright surface of the Sun: That's the Sun's corona. Wowee! I photographed something I didn't even realize you could see without the Moon eclipsing the Sun. Suddenly I'm really happy with the shots! If we could reduce magnification a bit more or gain a wider field of view, my photo would look something like this, taken in France during a total solar eclipse in 1999:


Click the image to see the story.

( Optics details )

... to produce this flight to our nearest star:

( Click to see the animated version! )

I'm loving this whole digital-astrophotography thing.

Enjoy!

Best,
Chris

Bonus Astro-Image of the Day: A Flight to the Nearest Star

Here's my newest astrophoto taken with the Meade telescope. I took this one as part of a test to see if the changes I made to the drive's setup yesterday helped tracking. Unfortunately, soon after setting up the telescope and assorted electronics, I discovered that there's no Sun setting in the system. WTF? So I had to manually set it up using a compass and level. Seriously. Anyhow, the results don't really tell me much, because part of today's manual setup required pointing to two stars that I couldn't see, what with it being daytime and all. *sigh*

So I got results similar to the Moon shots: Once again, the drive didn't track correctly. Even more disappointing is that, through the eyepiece, I couldn't spot any sunspots or any other details, just a big, over-bright orb of Sun-ness.

(At this point you might be wondering why I'm not blind. Of course I used a full-aperture solar filter! Never point optics at the Sun without a true solar filter that covers all of the primary end of the instrument.)

Still, I thought it might be fun to once again image the movement and make an animated GIF to offer y'all what feels like a flight over the Moon! Here's a still from the animated GIF (which you can see under the cut):



During image processing on my computer is where I got really excited. Notice the detail you can see beyond the bright surface of the Sun: That's the Sun's corona. Wowee! I photographed something I didn't even realize you could see without the Moon eclipsing the Sun. Suddenly I'm really happy with the shots! If we could reduce magnification a bit more or gain a wider field of view, my photo would look something like this, taken in France during a total solar eclipse in 1999:


Click the image to see the story.

( Optics details )

... to produce this flight to our nearest star:

( Click to see the animated version! )

I'm loving this whole digital-astrophotography thing.

Enjoy!

Best,
Chris