Moon shots

My T-mount (connects the Nikon to the telescope) arrived in February and on the 9th there was a nice young Moon. Its age is measured from when it is New, with a Full Moon being at nearly 15 days. This day it was less than 3 days old so a nice crescent.

It wasn't dark like the photo suggests. That was taken at 1/160th of a second to avoid overexposure. Here's a couple of close-ups.



What I was really after though was a photo of Earthshine. The Full Moon can create shadows here on Earth. Because the Earth is bigger and reflects more sunlight it will light up the night side of the Moon even more. When there's a crescent Moon it's possible to see the whole.

The crescent is over-exposed because it's a 1 second shot. That star is called HP115945 and would just be visible to the naked eye if you had no street lights, perfect eyesight and a very dark moonless sky.

I also took a photo of the Moon with my 200mm lens three weeks before. Here the Moon is 9.5 days old. It was taken in colour but I had left it set to tungsten light balance by accident so I've just grey-scaled it. The above photos were all taken black-and-white.

I have cheated a little on all these using sharpen.

They Also Fly

East Midlands Airport isn't far from me to the south and in the evening aircraft regularly head that way. This one flew over as two Black-Headed Gulls were also passing.

Italy

In a previous post I mention Psychopath, where I used to play games online. The guy that used to run the site moved to Italy in 2005 to teach English to Italians. Me and my daughter have been lucky enough to be invited to stay with him on 3 separate occasions in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Here is one photo from every town or city we visited in order (apart from Murano and Mazzoboro, two of the Venetian islands).

Pratto della Valle in Padova (Padua to the English)

The Grand Canal in Venice, taken from the Ponte Di Rialto - it had to be a photo with gondalas really.

The Piazza Bra in Verona with the Roman amphitheatre, where they do open air operas, on the right.

Castelfranco (that isn't me in the photo).

View from the Ponte Vecchio in Bassano.
Cittadella.

View from the tallest Torre (tower) in Bologna.

Peschiera on Lake Garda

Sirmione - also on Lake Garda

An old bridge in Vicenza.

Ponte Vecchio in Florence (poorly placed sun).

View from the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello.

Burano.

Eclipses

I expect all of us remember the total solar eclipse of 1999. If only I had my Nikon DSLR then! However on March 3rd 2007 there was a total eclipse of the Moon and I took my telescope and Sony Cybershot over to my sister's so that my nephew and mum could also look. My sister was at work that night. As with the photos further below, the camera was just held at the eyepiece of the telescope and I had to hope that everything settled down shaking when the timer ran out.

Taken at 10:27 PM showing the Earth's shadow across the Moon.

This is the same picture but I've messed with the brightness so you can see the Moon in the shadow.

Total. Taken at 10:45 PM only a few minutes after totality started. The bright edge never disappeared, only moving to different positions.

On August 1st 2008 there was a partial solar eclipse visible from the UK. It's maximum was at 10:15 AM and unfortunately I don't have a break until 10:30. It was a cloudy day and very difficult to get a decent photo. Sometimes I held a welding shield lens over the camera, sometimes I did without and hoped I had the exposure right. Automatic exposure never works well with astronomy.

Sky Photos

On 30th January 2008 I came out of work to see an unusual looking sky. Luckily it hadn't changed when I got home.

This photo was taken on 9th June about 9PM

The evening the turf was laid I noticed rays of light coming from behind thre darkish cloud. I've tweaked the contrast a bit here.

Astronomy

Back in 2005 I bought a decentish telescope. I used to have one before a fire at the house and decided to replace it. To be honest I haven't done all that much with it, partly because it's a bit of a pain to set up every time. It's an equatorial mount, with motor drive, 150mm reflector. To use the motor drive you have to set it up pretty accurately and I couldn't use it on the garden as it was. Using it on the front was pointless with all the street lights.

At work I made a contraption that could hold my Sony Cybershot digital camera at the eyepiece and on April 14th 2005 I took these shots. My first attempt at astro-photography.

From left to right, Callisto, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede (and no I didn't know without running my Starry Night software). The image has been rotated 180 degrees because through the telescope Callisto would have been on the right. It's a 2 second exposure, which has over exposed Jupiter but it's hardly a professional setup. Jupiter is the bright "star" low in the south that you might have seen recently.

The photo of the Moon has also been rotated 180 degrees and I was chuffed to bits with it. Magnification is x30. I have no idea what the exposure was because I lost all that data with the software I used. What I do remember is moving the spot meter to get different settings.

Other insects

The first non-plant living thing I took a photo of in my garden was this Seven Spot Ladybird on a recently planted Hornbeam. It stayed around a few days but I haven't seen another one all year.

I saw these lovely looking caterpillars on my Silver Birch. When approached they arched their backs. I did a search on the internet and found out that they were in fact Sawfly Larvae and they can strip a young tree. I wasn't taking any chances, I don't know how long they'd been there but one branch was almost stripped bare. I put them on the bird table but nothing wanted them. Seems that when they arch their backs they also give off a foul smell.

A Hoverfly

Another type of Hoverfly

A Brown Hawker Dragonfly. It spent ages flying around as I vainly tried to take a photo, but then it settled on the hedge long enough.

Bees

Along the north of the garden on the other side of the fence is a large privet hedge. The neighbour to the north wanted to cut it down from 15 feet because he was trying to grow fruit trees. He couldn't reach the eastern edge, and no one else is bothered, so it's a bit ragged, and flowers. And that attracts the bees. For a few days there were loads back in July all over it.

I think these two are Buff-Tailed Bumble Bees. The White-Tailed Bumble Bee is very similar, especially the workers.



Honey Bee.

I have some marigolds and one evening while checking the birch for sawfly larvae I noticed one had a dark centre. It took a while to realise that a bee was in there but it wasn't moving.

I poked it with a long pointy thing and it started to back out.

I had to keep poking it because it would just go back in again.

Eventually it made its way out but was very lethargic. It was almost as though it was drunk on nectar.

It hadn't had enough though and soon turned round and dived back in. It was still there the next morning but eventually left.

Butterflies

The most common butterflies in my garden - and I don't get many yet - are the whites and gatekeepers. Of the photos taken below the only ones I'd ever seen (i.e. noticed) before this year would be the large whites and red admiral.

Speckled Wood - best picture I could get (last year I thought this was a Marbled White)

Large Whites - these never settle.

Male Gatekeeper.

Female Gatekeeper - seen better days.

Meadow Brown - larger than the Gatekeeper, only has one white dot in the eye and never seems to open its wings.

Red Admiral - this was on the fence for well over half an hour.