Cats from Work

Here are a few pictures of our 'adopted' cats at work.

Spider on a Tree

Moon-Jupiter Conjuction

Here are a few pictures taken of tonight's Moon-Jupiter conjunction .  The bottom picture was taken at a higher ISO to bring out more of the stars and turn the Moon into a bright orb with its on 'moon' (Jupiter).  The other bright star towards the bottom of the photo is Aldebaran.

Chalk Ridge Falls Park

Hamilton Pool

Moon Jan-17th

Sunset Pictures

These pictures were taken a few evenings ago.

Moon at Sunset

Lizard Log

Flowers at Hamilton Pool

Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar

I found this caterpillar outside our front door.  It was there for several days so I took some pictures of it last night.  I looked up information on it online since I had no idea what type of caterpillar it was and found it was a Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar which will turn into a Giant(Great) Leopard Moth.  The name giant and great are both used to name it.

Here is a short Wikipedia article on it. Giant Leopard Moth

Saturn and Titan

I managed to get this photo of Saturn tonight with my camera. I also managed to get Titan in the photo.  Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and second largest in the Solar System after Ganymede which is in orbit of Jupiter.  When this photo was taken Saturn was 10.069 AU from Earth or around 936 million miles away.

For a size comparison between Earth, the Moon, and Titan click on this link from Wikipedia. Titan is about 50% bigger than Earth's Moon and has a dense atmosphere. Titan was discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.

If you are curious to know how far all the other planets (including Pluto) and the Sun are from Earth right now you can go to Solar System Live.

Jupiter's Moons

I took two different pictures of Jupiter's moons tonight.  One at 8 pm and another one shortly after 11 pm.  You can see the moons changed position's in the two photos.  Note that HIP 20417 is also no longer in the photo.

Moon and Venus

Here is a picture I took several months ago when the Venus was rising and I managed to get the Moon in the same photo.

Random Photo

Just a quick post tonight. This is the inside of the state capitol building in Colorado.

Jupiter and Moons

I have another picture of Jupiter and its moons tonight.  I also need to make a slight correction regarding the photo of Jupiter last night. The star I identified as HIP 20417A can just be identified as HIP 20417 based on the photo. It is a binary system which has both HIP 20417A and HIP 20417B but they are so close together in the photo they appear as one star.  Tonight's picture has HIP 20417 again towards the top left and off to the middle-top right is HIP 20349 which lies about 167 light years away from us.  The two easily visible moons are Europa above Jupiter and Callisto below Jupiter. Io and Ganymede are really close to Jupiter's disc tonight so you cant differentiate them from Jupiter.  There was a slight indication of Io in the photo so I darkened the area where Io was in the northwestern part of Jupiter's disc.

Photos from the New Camera

I made an incremental upgrade to my camera last night. I was using the Canon PowerShot SX40 HS and now have the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS.  The detail in some of the images I took is much better than with the older camera.  The greatest improvement I noticed was my photo of the Orion Nebula I took tonight.  I superimposed the old image on the new one for comparison.  The image on the left side was the old, and the right side is the new photo taken tonight.

It is still very grainy but it now shows a lot more color and more of the nebula itself than the previous image.

I also took another picture of the Pleiades tonight and could actually label all of the stars that comprise it using the photo I took and then going into Stellarium for comparison.  The labeled photo is below.

The Pleiades nine brightest stars are named for the Seven Sisters in Greek Mythology and their parents, Atlas and Pleione. Sterope/Asterope are actually one sister however the name is spelled both ways. The names are shared by 22 Tauri (labelled Sterope) and 21 Tauri (labelled Asterope).  The Seven Sisters were Nymphs.

This photo is just a random one I decided to add of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion.

The last photo for tonight will be of Jupiter and its moons.  The reddish colored 'moon' northwest of Jupiter is actually a star (HIP 20417A) the three moons visible moving southeast away from Jupiter are: Io, Ganymede and Callisto.

Also HIP 20417A is about 1753 light years away form Earth.

Cell Phone Astrophotography

If you have a telescope and a cell phone with a camera you can take pictures of what you are seeing in the eyepiece of your telescope. All you really need is some time and patience.  I have only managed to take a few pictures this way so far, but I was only outside trying for about 15 minutes or so.  Once everything comes together however the pictures you can get can turn out pretty well.

Here are two photos that I got while using my phone to take photos through the telescopes eyepiece.  To do this, all you need to do is line up the camera from your phone to the eyepiece of the telescope and take the picture.  This can be a little tricky depending on the phone and even the case you have protecting your phone.  I managed to get a few good pictures of the Moon as shown above using this method. I also tried to get a picture of Jupiter and its moons, but was not entirely successful.  The reason being that once I got Jupiter in view through the eyepiece and could get the camera on the phone lined up properly, Jupiter had already moved out of the frame.  This problem could be solved if your telescope could target an object and then track with it as it moves across the sky.

Jupiter and Pleiades Cluster

Here is a picture I took this evening with both Jupiter and the Pleiades Cluster in the same shot.  If you look at the full size version of the photo you can make out some of Jupiter's moons as well.

While on a break close to 2 am I went outside for a few minutes to get a picture of the Moon.  It turned out okay I think.  It was a nice clear night tonight with many stars visible.

Sun Through Tree

I played around with the colors of this picture a bit to give it this nice blue tint.  I think it turned out rather well.  I looked at the original version and the black and white versions as well, but this one seemed to me to be the best.

And for something random just thrown in, here is a picture of the Capitol Building in Denver that was taken several years back while on a trip there for work.

The past few nights the clouds have prevented me from taking any good pictures of the Moon, Jupiter, etc.  I hope to have some new ones of those objects fairly soon to post on here.