The moon has a pimple!

 Lunar occultation of Mars captured from our kitchen window in SF. 

Does the moon have a pimple or is that Mars being occluded?

It started from lower left and ended top middle.

Light cloud cover that you can't see in the photos but it did cause the beginning images (lower left) to be softer. The clouds actually made it look nice and spooky through binoculars. Maybe at some point I'll edit a short video from the footage I captured to stack.

The Moon and a Pale Red Dot

The Moon and Mars.

I stole "Pale Red Dot" from a friend, Kevin, who replied to me, "Look at that pale red dot. Our future home!".

Also I probably would not have taken the photo if Linda had not looked out the window and pointed out how cool the moon looked and asked what the bright thing next to it was. Thanks Linda!

Shot with my William Optics RedCat 51 which has a 250mm focal length but with my crop sensor camera it's closer to 400mm. I think anything longer and they both wouldn't have fit in frame.

Orange Moon, Red Planet and some Stripes

 2014-04-16 Lunar eclipse. I think this is about the full eclipse of the moon. Unfortunately there were a lot of thin clouds. Luckily they were thin enough that it was still easy to see the eclipse.

I think this shot is a bit before the full eclipse but it was a bit more clear.

Here is an animation of a little bit into the eclipse till it started to go orange.

Mars was also at it's closest point to earth so I shot a few pictures of which this came out about the best. Like I said there were lots of light clouds and to top that off the seeing was not very good. I feel lucky I managed to get an image this good. Still waiting for good seeing and a clear night to go back out and try and get a better shot while Mars is still close.

And Jupiter was out so I snapped a few shots if it as well. Not to good. Again due to the poor seeing and light cloud cover mostly.

Spaced Out Friday

Finally had some clear skies and a little time so I took some old and new gear out to play with. Had fun but also technical issues with some new gear. Seeing wasn't to good either so none of my images came out as well as I would have liked.

Probably my best Satrun image yet but I am a little disappointed. I guess the seeing wasn't so great so there was probably not much I could have done to get a better image.


I think this might be my first image of Mars.


I think this is a slightly better image of the Sombrero Galaxy (M104).


And a noisy but okay(ish) image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51).