1st December 2008

Occultation of the Moon and Venus
On Dec 1st the Moon passes directly over Venus. Timings will vary according to location, but from Bromsgrove it should start at about 15:46. Venus will reappear at about 17:17.
If the skies are clear I will try to get some photographs (At 17:13 the Space Station and attached Shuttle are due to fly over Bromsgrove).



Update: No photographs. Clouds obscured Venus going behind the Moon and also emerging. A gap in the clouds occurred about 20 minutes after emergence so not all was lost.

6th December 2008

Uranus revisited
The November 25th image was taken with the 6" scope. These images were made with the 10".
30x10second images stacked with DeepSkyStacker.
Uranus is the lower of the two bright central objects. (Note the slight hint of blue)



This superimposition shows the shift of Uranus from 25 November to 6 December. A moon of Uranus can also be seen.



The Moon stack of best of 84 images at 1000th second. No sharpening of image.


7th December 2008

Uranus
Hazy cloud made imaging difficult, but a third image was taken to show the continued motion of Uranus.
No moons of Uranus visible




Neptune in Capricorn

Haze, and the fact that Neptune was rapidly going behind trees gave only 6x15 second frames
Nevertheless, a hint of a disc is present, plus a blue tint.

9th December 2008

Uranus
Wind caused the scope to rock back and forth so images came out with a blurry bulge on the bright stars and also on Uranus.
A moon of Uranus could be seen, this time below the planet.
   





The calculated positions of the moons are below, so it looks like Titania is the only moon I have been able to image so far.
 

Animation of 4 images