Earth from 1 Million Miles away

With all the attention being given to Pluto, it was nice to see this outstanding photo of our home from way up in space - far enough away to show the entire sunlit planet.

Details on the camera and satelite used to capture this image can be found at NASA.gov

Pluto Flyby is Confirmed - All Systems Go!

With a successful fly-by of the planet Pluto behind us, now we wait for the real exciting stuff - hi-res close-ups of the farthest planetary body.  New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tuesday, about 7,750 miles above the surface — roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India — making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.
Read about here at New Horizons.

Wow - a clear night at last!

After waiting for over a month, last Saturday night (early Sunday morning) was a nice clear and calm evening.  Reasonably good transparency too for a summer evening.  So, of course, I was out with the scope.

Most of the night was spent checking out the new 'ScopeStuff' focuser I purchased for my Orion ST-80 guide scope.  The focuser that comes with the ST-80 is pretty bad.  I was hoping a good quality focuser would help in both getting a sharp focus and holding the guide camera locked tight with no or at least minimal flexure.  After almost 3 hours getting everything mounted and re-adjusted, and fighting some software crashes with SGP (still can't get that program to auto-focus my camera), I was able to test out the new system with a photo of M20, the Trifid Nebula.

So here is the result ...

M20 - The Trifid Nebula
48 min (24x120sec) at ISO 800 w/Canon 70D
EdgeHD11 w/0.61x Focal Reducer

Based on the roundness of the stars and the guide plots on the PHD monitor screen (+/- 1 arcsec) I think maybe the new focuser helped out a lot.  But, I'll need to test more.  It could have just been the calm atmosphere.  Looks like later this week we might have another one or two clear evenings.  You'll know where I'll be :)

Pluto - look out, here we come!

With just about a day to closest approach, images of the farthest planet (sorry, dwarf planet) from the sun are streaming in and boy are they great!  Nothing like what I expected, but hey, the universe always seems to surprise us.

Check out Pluto mission at APL for up to the minute information on this history making event.

Sinkholes in a Comet

Looks like earth is not the only place to develop sink holes.  Check out this article on the sinkholes on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.   SkyandTelescope

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko