On January 30th Venus and the Moon joined up in the morning sky for a lovely conjunction:
Sony RX100, 1/60s, f/4.9, ISO 1600
Category Archives: astrophotography
Supernova in M82!
Last week a group of students from London discoverd a Supernova in the nearby galaxy M82 (in this case, nearby means 12 million lightyears…)
Professional search programs missed the supernova as the automatic detection programs ruled it out because it was too bright. M82 is part of the bright M81 & M82 galaxy pair.
Today I had the chance to take a picture of it:
January Moon
A partial mosaic of the lunar terminator:
Big Sunspot AR1944
Huge Sunspot AR1944
This week a huge sunspot rotated into view:
winter galaxies
Winter is not normally a good time for galaxies because the Milky Way is porminent in the sky, but while waiting for comet Lovejoy to rise, I used the time to spend a little exposure time on some bright galaxies.
The Leo Triplet
Trying to catch ISON, got Lovejoy instead
On November 17th I decided at 1:00 to try to take some pictures of comet ISON before it’s rendezvous with the sun.
To get above the fog in the Rhine valley I drove up a still-open (normally closed in winter) mountain pass.
I arrived early at the Furkajoch (a mountain pass in Vorarlberg), so I had the chance to take some pictures of the alpine landscape and of comet Lovejoy.
The full moon and a thin layer of high cirrus cloud made the process of locating and imaging the comet difficult.
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A summer night in the Alps
While bivouacing with my family high in the Alps I took some wide-angle shots of the summer sky:
Nikon AF Nikkor 20mm f/2.8
15s @f/2.8
C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)
It looks as if 2013 will be a good year for comets. This spring Comet Panstarrs is visible in the darkening sky after Sunset and in December comet ISON should put up an even more impressive show.
