The Moon on 9/5/08

took my ticket into my local shop about an hour ago to see if i had won anything. woman told me that i had to ring the number on the back as they only pay out so much and she couldnt tell me how much! i was gob smacked. ive only ever bought about 5 tickets. gave them a call and ive won 5 figures:D IM OVER THE MOON. anyone else on here ever won anything? ... more

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I had never heard the argument that the moon orbits the sun, but it does go around the sun as it revolves around the earth. The question, which does it orbit more? Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy Blog lays out the argument and explains. Turns out, it orbits the Earth, despite these claims. The above claims are true, but are not important in this argument. Instead, you have to look at something called the Hill sphere. Basically, it’s the volume of space around an object where the gravity of tha... more

Tonight was nice with moderately good seeing and relatively warm temperatures (50°). While we were setting up (my wife came out too), some a neighbor stopped by to say hi and see what we were up to. They brought along two friends who were visiting from out of town - the husband was from Togo (which would qualify as way out of town). Once I got the scope aligned, I showed them Mars, Orion and Saturn. It was fun talking to them - my wife had been to Africa - Niger, Ivor... more

The Moon on 3/10/08 The moon was a graceful crescent tonight and set not long after I took this photo. I’ve spent the rest of the night working on learning how to get better astrophotos with my Nikon D50. I’ll post my Orion Nebula photo (what else?) later after it’s done processing. Update: Here’s the Orion photo - I’ve combined ISO 400 images with ISO 1600 - it allowed me to pick up more of the faint nebulosity. M42-The Great Orion Nebu... more

M82-Bode’s Galaxy on 3/8/08 Tonight was kind of hazy so I decided to just get one image. I’ve imaged Bode’s Galaxy before, but never for very long. It’s actually quite large and a reasonably easy-to-find target. It and the Cigar Galaxy are located off the end of the big dipper and are gravitationally related. Astronomers think that Bode’s is responsible for the wierd shape and properties of the Cigar Galaxy. Anyway, this image does a nice job capturing thi... more

Photo Messier Marathon 2008 - Day 1 Here’s the composite image of all 43 of the Messier Objects I captured last night. Each image is made of fifteen 15s images stacked (225s total). I’m hoping to fill the entire grid out by the end of the month. Here’s a link to all of the images captured thus far as part of this Photo messier Marathon. ... more