I managed to do a little solar observing today, even though I had a thin cloud layer I had to look through. Here's what I imaged of what Sol looked like at 4:00pm. … [Read more...]

It was a crisp, clear, and cold morning as I ventured outside to catch the ISS make a fly over of my house today. According to Heavens Above website the space station would be at a magnitude of -2.9, enough for me to try to image. Right on time, shortly after 5:20am it made it's pass just to the south of my house. This time I only had about one minute of imaging time because … [Read more...]

In conjunction with the Peabody Museum's latest interactive exhibit Black Holes: Infinity and Beyond, the Astronomical Society of New Haven held a day long Solar Party on the lawn of the museum. More than 350 people looked through a variety of telescopes at our nearest star throughout the day. Many questions were answered by club members manning the telescopes about the sun … [Read more...]

For those of you who can't get enought pictures of the Super Moon, here are two more that I captured. Both of them as the moon rose from the horizon, and went through a cloud layer. … [Read more...]

So how many of you went you last night to check out the "Super Moon"?  Did it look bigger to you? The last last time it was this close was in March of 1993, eighteen years ago. After witnessing many moonrises, this one was spectacular! So why was is so good last night, as compared to others? When the perigee moon lies close to the horizon, it can appear absolutely … [Read more...]

The best viewing of Mercury for 2011 is upon us. For the next week or so you should be able to see Mercury in the western sky about 30 minutes after sunset. Tonight it was well placed to see it along with Jupiter about 4 degrees away, located just below it. Fighting a sky, getting more cloudy by the minute, and a fog bank rolling in off the hills, I managed to get off … [Read more...]

A 30' x 58" American flag, known as "The Patriot Flag" was flown at the Newington, Connecticut Fire Department Headquarters on Main Street March 11th. According to a press release, this project is managed by a grassroots effort by citizens and public safety personnel, "Keeping the memory alive" of 9-11. The flag will fly in cities throughout the United States, hosted by … [Read more...]

After several rain storms and some major melting in our icepack here in Connecticut, rivers and streams of all sizes have overflowed their banks yet again. This time most of the major damage was in the western part of the state around the Housatonic river. Wherever you went, the flooding had an impact on you this week. Here's a shot of the Farmington River in Simsbury as it … [Read more...]

While one of my cameras was doing a 30 second time exposure of the double fly-by of the ISS and the Discovery Space Shuttle, I had my telescope and another camera trained on something else. Knowing this would the last time to capture a Space Shuttle actually in space I gave a try to capture it. It was much brighter than I though it would be, but much smaller than I thought it … [Read more...]

Here's a shot of the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle making a rare double fly-by from Marlborough, Connecticut. In this 30 second exposure both trails are visable as they passed through the constellation Cassiopeia.  The ISS is the second brighter trail, following STS-133 only about 10 seconds behind. Both were very visable as they crossed over the sky at … [Read more...]