Venus and Jupiter Meet

Venus and Jupiter were close in the western sky tonight.  Well they looked close by eye, but when a photograph is taken with a long telephoto lens they appear to be quite a long way apart.  The whole thing is an illusion anyway and in reality they are millions of miles apart and Jupiter is 10x bigger that Venus.  This is also true of many the stars we see in our constellations - they seem to form a 2D pattern in the sky, when in 3D reality they are nowhere near each other.

Return to Bowland

On Tuesday I went out for the first time in four months to look for the Milky Way. With it only just being past the summer solstice it wasn't the best time I know, but I was I was wondering how dark it got in our usual spot in the Forest of Bowland. The answer is, not very - certainly not dark enough to see the Milky Way properly, although the murky high level clouds didn't help. No noctilucent clouds either, which was another thing I was hoping for.

As my broken tracking mount has still not been returned, I could only take a wide angle set up with me to do some constellation shots.

So I didn't come back with much except for a few shots like this one showing Cassiopeia and Andromeda - can you see it? The best thing was meeting up with John and Susan Walsh and having a chat at an appropriate distance.

A very small and faint Andromeda is ringed in the above photo.

Jupiter and Saturn over Pendle Hill, looking south from Bowland. It wasn't this light, but the camera can make it seem brighter. And that's no sunset, it's the light pollution from Clitheroe. A bit over-sharpened I'm afraid.

So not many photos to process for once, but here's a couple of annotated asterisms to finish with:

My Third All-Nighter

Here are some shots from my third All-Nighter this month where I stay up until the wonderful Dawn Chorus of birds start singing in order to view Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon rising in the south east.  But before that happens I spent the night taking shots of Deep Sky Objects.

M81 and M82 - Bodes Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy

M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula

Can you see anything?

Right to Left - Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon does below.

Jupiter showing some very faint cloud bands

Saturn - nice to see the separation between the planet and it's rings

Mars - well at least it's a bit reddish!

The waning crescent moon