I had the telescope and binoculars out for visual observation, but the Canon 550D provided the real fun, with the 75-300mm lens giving enough zoom to get a reasonably close look at the action. The timing didn’t allow me to see the whole thing (it started around 4:30AM, and was still heavily in shadow as it set around 7AM), but I still got some pretty good shots.

4:48AM: a chunk of the Moon goes missing

5:25AM: parts of the Moon fall in to deep shadow

I had to increase the exposure time as the Moon grew darker, which caused some slight blurring from the Moon’s motion across the sky. To limit the blurring, I also had to progressively increase the ISO setting, which made later images more noisy, but these shots still give you some idea of just how dark the Moon became in the sky.

5:44AM: the entire Moon glows red

You might expect the Moon to go completely dark during the eclipse, but even when it’s entirely within the Earth’s shadow, our atmosphere scatters a small amount of light toward it. Only the reddest parts of that light make it all the way through our atmosphere, though, which causes the Moon’s red colour.

6:15AM: the Moon all but fades from view during totality

I think this is the photo of the night, though:

6:05AM: a timely encounter with a morning jet

It’s not uncommon for jets to fly past our house, and after seeing one fly past, my wife was ready at the camera when a second appeared. The camera was still set on a two-second exposure to capture the (by this point very dim) Moon, but that just makes the jet look like something from a sci-fi movie.

Another eclipse will be visible from here in December — it may not be as spectacularly dark as this one, but it starts at a more reasonable hour (around midnight) and the whole thing will be visible. I’m sure I’ll have more photos then, at least as long as the weather co-operates.

Last Friday night, an event occurred that I’ve been looking forward to ever since the day I bought my telescope — Mars came in to opposition. In simple terms, that’s the point at which Mars and Earth come closest to each other in their respective orbits, which means that Mars is far bigger and brighter to look at than at other times. Oppositions with Mars happen only every 26 months or so, but it was definitely worth waiting for!

Even though this was a fairly bad opposition (some oppositions bring Mars and Earth closer together than others), I got a far better view of Mars than I’ve ever had before. Usually it’s just a very small, fuzzy, red disc — clearly not a pin-point star, but too small to see any detail on. On Friday, though, I could clearly see one of the polar ice-caps, a small bit of dark red banding below the cap, and larger areas of dark banding across the rest of the otherwise bright red surface.

The next opposition, in 2012, won’t bring Mars any closer than this one did, but a few after that, in 2018, Mars will be almost twice as close as it was this time. I’ll have to make sure I’m ready for it!

Speaking of next time, there’s actually another really good pass tomorrow night (the 4th), starting about 9:08pm. Here’s hoping today’s clouds have disappeared by then!

If you’re in Melbourne, and you want to check it out, head outside at 9:58PM and look north-west — you should very soon see a bright dot, climbing steadily up in to the sky, and growing brighter as it does. It’ll reach its highest point in the sky at 10:01, in the south-west, and then head back down to set in the south-east at 10:04. If you have a small telescope, or even binoculars, you should be able to make out some structure. Tracking it in a telescope will require quick movements, though!

If you miss tonight’s pass, you can get a list of other upcoming passes at Heavens Above.

This shot of the Apollo 14 landing site is definitely the best of the lot so far — you can see not just the base of the Lunar Module, but also the science payload set up a short distance away, and the path the astronauts walked to deliver it:

There are more images on the LRO website. The best news is that LRO still isn’t in its final mapping orbit, so it should be sending back even better photos of these historic sites in the future.

It took a little while, but eventually, I found Lulin in my binoculars. It wasn’t exactly a spectacular sight — little more than a faint, roundish smudge, really — but after studying it for a little while I thought I could just make out the bright central spot of the comet’s nucleus. After checking the star charts for any fixed objects in that location (just as Charles Messier would have nearly 250 years ago) and finding nothing, I’m sure that what I saw was indeed Comet Lulin.

Ah well, such is this hobby of mine! It looks like we’re heading in to a stormy weekend, so I’m hoping that either tonight (though it’s not looking good so far) or tomorrow night will deliver the goods.

I know how to find it now at least, so when I do get out in to some nice dark skies, I should have no trouble tracking it down.

The problem with having the moon high in the sky is that it light blots out views of faint objects, but I still tried the Nagler on Omega Centauri, a massive globular cluster, and on the Lagoon Nebula quickly with the UHC filter. I’ll have to wait for a clear, moonless night to really see what it do, though.

For a laugh, I threw one of my older eyepieces in while looking at the moon, and the difference was chalk and cheese — the bundled eyepieces aren’t terrible, but they’re definitely not as sharp and have less contrast, and the higher magnification pieces are nowhere near as nice to use thanks to their narrow fields of view. The fancy-pants glass is definitely worth it.

The 21mm Stratus is a great low-power eyepiece for large nebulas and star clusters, while the medium-power 13mm Nagler is more for the smaller faint fuzzy things and the planets. The bundled eyepieces have an apparent field of view of about 50 degrees, and don’t perform well at the edges, but the Stratus as a 68 degree field and is sharp right to the edge, and the Nagler is 82 and should be just as sharp. The extra field of view will make observing much easier, since I won’t have to readjust the telescope so often to track the sky’s movement, especially at high magnification, which is a must for the planets. High magnification can help with small, faint things like galaxies, too, since it boosts contrast.

Of course, the bad weather curse has kept my Nagler inside since its purchase, but I’ve used the Stratus a couple of times, and it’s awesome — having a quality eyepiece really makes all the difference. With the UHC-E filter fitted, I got some great views of the Lagoon Nebula, and even though it’s not meant for planetary work, Jupiter was amazingly sharp. I’m very well set up now, so roll on the warm, clear spring nights!