Astronomy Photographer of the year 2012

[fuzzy]

Some absolutely stunning images

[Jurek]

Awesome.

I sense a trip to Greenwich Observatory is imminent.

[numbnuts]

I've just taken up astronomy this year and I'm just blown away with the photos people have taken I had know idea that the solar system was so colourful, but as with all things it comes with a hefty price tag and in this country we don't get many clear nights. When I get bored/ crap weather I use Stellarium
http://www.stellarium.org/

[PaulR]

But when the clouds clear, and the skies are steady with a fine high-altitude haze, there's quite a lot you can do with a £6 webcam from Morgan Computers.  This was taken in my London back garden on Friday night.

[David Martin]

That's a great red spot - Which is the moon?

[hellymedic]

Lovely image PaulR!
My David's image from Friday/Saturday was probably later at night, does not show the red spot but shows Europa close to the planet.

[PaulR]

Thanks Helly.  I'm sure that there'll be some awesome shots from Stag Lane soon - when I'm grown up I'd really like to have a roll-off roof observatory with a C14 on a sleek AP mount!  I see he has some October shots of Jupiter up on his site; has he posted any November/December shots on SGL or elsewhere yet? 

[hellymedic]

Don't think so. He went eclipse-chasing to Oz & sat next to someone with a streaming cold on the return flight.
He's still somewhat chesty and averse to getting cold at night...

[PaulR]

Oh, that's a shame.  I hope he's better soon.

I have say it was the cold that finally drove me indoors on Friday night/Saturday morning.  It got to the point where I could no longer operate the handset for the motor drives on the mount.  I even toyed with the idea of putting the heated dewshield on my head.

[hellymedic]

We have a 'warm room' remote from the scopes, where there's a heater and several computers used for telescope guiding and image processing but it was -3C in the observatory on Friday night.

[LEE]

My Wife went to Finland this March.  Her visit (to hopefully see the Northern Lights) coincided with the most active "Solar Winds" in a very long time.  Even the locals were "ooohing" and "ahhing".

This meant that she was able to capture the Aurora using a £50 hand-held camera.

I realise they are blurry but impressive all the same.



This is a "Crown".  You are looking vertically up, into a downward cascade of solar particles.

[PaulR]

Wow, that's quite something!

The one thing that really puts me off going on a trip like that is the fear that you'll be clouded out or arrive at a time that coincides with an unexpected lull in the solar wind.  But clearly this time everything worked.

[LEE]

Wow, that's quite something!

The one thing that really puts me off going on a trip like that is the fear that you'll be clouded out or arrive at a time that coincides with an unexpected lull in the solar wind.  But clearly this time everything worked.

It worked for my wife however....

The tourists are given "pagers" which are triggered when an Aurora starts.  You dive into insulated suits and leg it outside to gawp.

On this "once in a decade" event she was in a mountain-top restaurant when some locals ran in and told everyone to come and look (apparently it was bright enough to read by).

The Solar activity was so intense that it took the cell-phone/pager network down so people back at "base-camp" slept through it.

Now that would be a Bummer.

[hellymedic]

But when the clouds clear, and the skies are steady with a fine high-altitude haze, there's quite a lot you can do with a £6 webcam from Morgan Computers.  This was taken in my London back garden on Friday night.

David asks which webcam and telescope you used. He is impressed but too shy to ask you directly!

[rogerzilla]

What sort of exposure dioes Jupiter need?  The Moon obviously needs the same as a sunny day on Earth.  A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it would want 4.5 more stops, so maybe 1/80 at f/4, ISO 100.

[PaulR]

David asks which webcam and telescope you used. He is impressed but too shy to ask you directly!

It's a Philips SPC880 (successor to the Toucam II which I used to use) and it was stuck up the rear end of a Celestron f10 8" SCT (the OTA from the 8SE) with an additional Revelation-branded 2.5x barlow, so roughly f25 (5 metres).  Exposure was, I think, 1/33 with the gain as low as I dared.  This was about 90% of the frames from a 90 second sequence at 10 fps.  An IR cut filter was used as well.

I had another look at Jupiter last night and I was shocked at how bad the seeing was - or perhaps delighted to realise how good the seeing had been when I took this sequence.

[hellymedic]

Thanks!
David's out looking at Jupiter again.
Crewkerne Astronomy have been Tweeting some excellent images tonight.

[PaulR]

Well, after the other night's poor seeing the conditions last night did look rather good but I was too worn out and under the weather to think about getting the gear all set up again - I haven't even packed away the mount from the last time I was away, it's standing in the middle of the shed preventing me from getting to my bike, or would be if I was feeling up to cycling today.

[Riggers]

Well ... Astronomy Pic Of The Day for me, is this one:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121203.html

I know it won't hit everyone's 'buttons', but it's a lovely pic.