A new spot has appeared on the east limb of the Sun. It has been designated with the NOAA number 10999 and type Axx. To the left of the spot are some areas of bright faculae.

It is just south of the equator at 1 degree and longitude 202 degress.

The Moon was low and bright in the sky and the image was affected by seeing conditions. The area in the attached image is in the southern highlands around the bright crater Tycho.

Saturn as always looks splendid and the rings are getting narrow now, ready for the ring plane crossings next year. The seeing condition where not good but a reasonable image was acquired tonight.

The Moon makes a triangle with two objects tonight. Above the Moon is Saturn and to the right of the Moon is the star Regulus in Leo.

Three prominences can be seen on the sun's limb this afternoon. In white light, there are no sunspots visible upon the disc giving the impression that not much is happening on the sun. The h-alpha telescope shows a different story!

The planet Saturn was 2.4 degrees to the east of the bright star Regulus in Leo tonight. Of the two, Saturn was the brighter at +0.6 compared to Regulus at +1.4

Over in the west, Mars makes an alignment with the two brighter stars of Gemini, namely Castor and Pollux.

A better night with less cloud to spoil the view. Found Mercury with 7x50 binoculars and once found, it was a easy naked eye star in the western twilight sky. The attached image has Mercury above the observatory dome. Magnitude of the planet is -0.5 and was 7 degrees above the horizon. Elongation from the sun is 18.8 degrees and the phase is 63.3%

The weather was getting cloudy as I searched for the planet Mercury after sunset. Eventually picked up the planet with 7x50 binoculars and once found, it was an easy naked eye object. Guide 8 has the magnitude at -0.6

This star faded from naked eye view back in July last year and it still is only visible through good sized teleacopes. At the moment, the star is at magnitude +13.86 (V-Band). How long it will take to rise back to its naked eye magnitude of +6.0 is any ones guess.

Couldn't resist imaging these two galaxies. I have examined the images in detail and they show no new objects, i.e. supernova/asteroids.

 

 

Imaged the near earth asteroid Geographos tonight at is passed relatively close to earth tonight at 0.125 AU (18.7 million km / 11.62 million miles). Attached is an small movie of eight frames. The speed of the movie is 2625x the actual speed. Movie compiled by Mark Henthorne. Note the file is very large! 1.2mb. Not recommended for dial up connections.

Attached is a composite image of Saturn and its moons. The image of the moons was poor on the original image but have been enhanced.

A supernova was discovered by Giancarlo Cortini on 26th January in the galaxy NGC 524. The magnitude of the supernova is still relatively bright at magnitude +14.83 (Unfiltered magnitude) It peaked in magnitude at +13.5 and is currently in fade.

Imaged comets 46P Wirtanen, 17P Holmes and C/2008C1 Chen Gao. Comet Wirtanen was the brighter of the three at magnitude +9.4 residing in the constellation Aries. This periodic comet has an orbital period of 5.44 years.  The second comet imaged was Chen Gao and was smaller and fainter as seen on the CCD. Guide8 has the magnitude as +12.4 at a distance of 1.34 au (134 million miles) The comet will get a little brighter in April at +11.7 , so isn't expected to be naked eye. Finally, a quick look at the now faint comet 17P Holmes to check upon its activity. Nothing of note in the image found!

Clouds, Rain, Wind, Snow and Ice:

Not much observing of late:

 

 

During the last few days of January, the planets Venus and Jupiter are drawing together for a close conjunction on the 1st February. Venus is moving towards the sun whereas Jupiter is moving away from the sun. They can be both seen, low in the east dawn sky just before sunrise. The attached image shows the brighter Venus to the upper right of fainter Jupiter. They are about two degrees apart today but will get to about 0.5 degrees in separation on the 1st.

Solar Cycle has officially started with the sunspot group 10981 on view in the northern hemisphere. The sun has a cycle of 11 years when the number of sunspots reaches maximum. When the sunspots latitudes are plotted over time, there is a pattern that shows the spots appearing initially at high latitudes that slowly migrate towards the equator. Over the 11 year period, the plot of sunspots resembles the shape of a butterfly and consequently the plot is known as the butterfly diagram.

The attached image is a drawing of the Sun as projected through a telescope onto a piece of white paper. This is the best and safest way to observe sunspots!

Warning: Never Look at the Sun with any unprotected optical equipment. You may risk permanent blindness!

While setting up a celestron telescope in the back garden, I happen to glance towards the north east and saw a lovely slow moving meteor to the right of polaris. It was moving downwards towards Ursa Major. Initially, it was stellar and then formed a sparkling train behind it. It travelled for about 40 degrees and seemed to last for ages. Probably about 4 seconds. There was no colour seen. It attained a similar magnitude of Mars that was over in the east at magnitude of -1.5  After watching the meteor fade from view, I glanced at my watch and I timed it at 18.33:40 UT +/- 10 seconds. One of the best meteors I've seen for a long time.

Mars is less than two days from opposition and the planets disc is showing some great details. The atmospheric seeing (image stability) is poor tonight but even so, I was able to get a reasonable image. Attached is an image along with a detailed image that identifies certain surface features.

The Moon normally looks a colourless object but there are some subtle areas that do do have a hint of colour. One of the first areas I noticed as being tinged red was the plateau that the 45km (27.9mile) wide crater Aristarchus sits on. Aristarchus is famous for being one of the brightest features upon the lunar surface. It is so bright that it can be seen on the dark side of the moon when it is illuminated by Earth shine. The attached image has been exaggerated in the red to bring out the red coloured area. The red tinge is best seen with a large aperture telescope when the phase of the Moon is great, best towards full moon time.

The Moon was imaged tonight with a web cam attached to the 16" SCT. I have only imaged the area at the terminator, the transition point on the Moon where day break is occurring.

The Moon surface is normally best viewed towards the terminator where the lunar night and lunar day transition occurs. But it can be interesting to have a look at some of the lunar surface where the Sun is high in the lunar sky. Craters that normally look impressive at low sun angle illumination are found nearly invisible when the sun is at a high elevation. What now comes into view is the numerous rays, bright spots and bright rings that surround some crater rims. There are also faint dark collars seen around some craters. There is a spectacular system of dark rays that radiate radially around the crater Dionysis, about 1/3 rd up from the bottom of the attached image.

The atmosphere this evening was very stable and the "seeing" conditions gave a very good image of Mars. The attached shows Mars with plenty of details visible upon its surface. The image is better as the planet gained a higher altitude and the last two images are the best taken so far this year.

After months of very little white light solar activity, there is now a fairly active sunspot group towards the central disc of the sun. It has be given the sunspot number 10978. Over on the east west limb, sunspot 10978 is about to disappear over the limb. See attached. Warning: Never Look at the Sun with any unprotected optical equipment. You may risk permanent blindness!

Mars is getting closer and brighter as it approaches the earth. It shines very brightly in the winter sky at magnitude -1.4 in the constellation Gemini. You can't mistake this object as it shines with a distinctly orange glow. Through the telescope, I was able to image the north polar hood which looks white at the top of the planet. and some dusky shadings towards the south. To the right is Syrtis Major and extending to the left is Sinus Sabaeus, the long thin shaded strip. In the attached images, look at the middle image and there is a bright spot to the upper left quadrant; this is morning cloud in the Chryse region of Mars.

Imaged three comets this evening. First comet imaged was comet 8P/Tuttle. This comet is getting ever closer to the earth and may be visible to the naked eye in January at an estimated magnitude of +5.5  It is currently about 76 million km (46.5 million miles) distant.

Second comet imaged is 93P/Lovas. This comet will get a bit closer to the earth over the next week or so and then will slowly increase its distance from us. Currently, it is 145 million km (90 million miles) distant.

Finally, the very large comet 17P/Holmes was imaged. Due to its angular size, the attached image only shows the central part of the coma. The comet itself is still visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch in Perseus. It was similar in appearance as the naked eye view of the double star cluster also in Perseus. The true diameter of this comet exceeds the diameter of the Sun. ( 1.39 million km / 870 thousand miles ) and makes this comet the largest object in our solar system!

Back in October, I recorded an image of Uranus that contained a spike that aligned with the equatorial plane of the planet. Had the spike not be aligned with the equatorial plane, I would have dismissed it as a pure image defect. Any way, at the time, I submitted it to The Astronomer for comment, which happened at their AGM. Following publication in TA, I had some feedback from Maurice Gavin with regards to similar images that he has taken and the spike was caused by the opening of the observatory. The offending part would cause a diffraction spike. I have finally been able to take some follow up exposures where I deliberately placed the edge of the dome slit within about 1/5^th of the telescopes field of view and the spike is reproduced. The spike no longer being aligned with the planets equatorial plane. The change in spike angle being a result of the change in the planets azimuth. So a lesson learnt. I hope this information will be of use to other observers that come across such image defects.

The comet still remains an easy naked eye, fuzzy star in Perseus at magnitude +3.0  James Martin and myself did some imaging of the comet with the CCD and the comet is so big now, we have taken two images and stitched them together to get a full view of the comets coma. There is still no tail to the comet. This being due to any tail pointing away from us? There is some indication of linear structure in the coma. What I find really great about this comet is its perfect smooth fuzzy ball shape. It really looks best through a pair of binoculars than the large telescope we where using tonight.

A splendid site is to be had in the constellation of Perseus with the sudden brightness outburst of comet 17P/Holmes. This comet is normally very faint at magnitude +17, but around the 24th October, it began to brighten a million fold. I was working away in Sweden when Richard Miles attempted to contact me to image this exceptional event as the UK mainland was clouded out except the IoM. Anyway, he was able to contact James Martin in Peel who was able to confirm the comets activity. Back in Sweden, the cloud only cleared on two days of the two weeks I was away but the comet was easily picked up in Perseus; it asterim being distorted by a new "star" at about magnitude +2.4  The comet looked stellar and was still easily visible from the bright street lit town of Lidkoping!  Back home, I had to await a small break in the clouds to image the comet. See attached. Through 7x50 binoculars, it looks like a slightly oval glowing ball. See attached also. It will be interest to see what happens with this comet over the coming weeks.

I imaged Uranus through the 16" telescope and CCD in an effort to capture some of its moons. At the moment, Uranus' north pole is tilted only 2.3 degrees away from the earth and hence the southern hemisphere is directed in our direction. Due to this low tilt angle, the moons of Uranus will be seen to make a line of stars either side of the planet, in much the same way a the four moons of Jupiter appear. When I got around to processing the image, I made a negative and tweaked the contrast and I was surprised to see a narrow spike that is aligned with the equatorial plain of Uranus. This was totally unexpected and I needed to confirm its existence. (even though two images showed the same). So the following night, I took a second series of images using identical telescope and CCD set up, but the spike feature was no longer there. So what was the spike in the first image? Possibly an image artifact? Contamination within the optics? Dust in the plane of the Uranus system? I would have thought this would have been observed by now in the infra red, so not likely?

The planet Mars is now rising in the late evening and found shinning at a bright -0.3 magnitude in Gemini. It is made more outstanding by its orange red colour. During the early hours of this morning, I acquired some images through the 16" SCT and some details can be seen upon its surface. There are dusky shadings in the south  and a bright patch caused by cloud in the Elysium region.  There is also a white north polar hood but is not very prominent. As can be seen in the attached image, the planet shows a gibbous phase with only 88.3% illuminated. Guide 8 has the planet at a distance of 80 million miles (0.86au) The planets north pole is tilted to earths direction by 5.9 degrees. Central meridian is 163 degrees longitude. The planet is currently only 10.85" wide but will increase as it approaches opposition on 24th December.

Imaged some galaxies with the 16" Meade tonight. Galaxy NGC 7331 and its companion galaxies looked splendid in the wider field of the f/3.3 focal reducer that was attached to the telescope. The telescope also imaged the famous Stephen's Quintet group and using the f/3.3 focal the image scale was not showing this group at its best. I'll for go the focal reducer the next time I image this group.

Soon after sunset, I trained the 16" Meade at this newly discovered object and through a 55mm Orthoscopic eyepiece ( x70 magnification ) it looked like an unresolved globular cluster. The comets faint tail can be seen extending due north from the comet nucleus. According to Guide8 software, this comet is at magnitude +7.2 at a distance from earth of 0.98 au ( 91.1 million miles ). At the time, the comet was only 8.2° above the western horizon.

 

During the early morning of 14th October, I was fortunate to see the occultation of the star TYC0694-01184-1 by the asteroid 444 Gyptis. The star is of magnitude +10.2  and the asteroid was fainter at magnitude +11.0

Using the 16" telescope, both objects could be seen separately until 00.50:34h they merged into one object. At 00.55:11.3 UTC the image of the two faded abruptly and a possible blinking at that instant? There wasn't a corresponding jump up in brightness as the asteroid passed off the star and appears to have been a gradual increase in star brightness. So I was unable to determine the total length of the occultation and hence work out the actual size of the asteroid. When the asteroid and star started to be seen as separate objects, I did see the star blink out briefly. This may of been a satellite of the asteroid or simply due to poor seeing (sky stability). This is my first positive asteroid / star occultation See Society for Popular Astronomy Occultation page at the following link:-

http://www.popastro.com/sections/occ/gyptis_20071014.htm

Venus is very bright at magnitude -4.4 in the dawn sky and can easily be seen with the naked eye in the daytime sky if you know where to look. Through the telescope, a crescent phase is seen. The terminator ( the dark side and light side meet) on the planet is lightly shaded. The planet is 27.6% illuminated and the polar diameter is 37.8 arc seconds long. Current distance is 0.44 au ( 40,900,000 miles) and is increasing as the planet moves westward away from the sun. The planet was 39 degrees high in the sky when the image was taken. Seeing conditions where very poor.

Imaged this faint comet through the 16" Meade and CCD. Three images where obtained and its motion was seen when the images where blinked. Astrometrica has its nuclear magnitude as 17.1. At the time of observation, the comet is 5.11 au. distant and is slowly moving away from the earth. A faint nebulosity can be seen around the small nucleus. This comet was originally discovered on 10th April at magnitude +18.6

There are currently two variable stars that are doing opposite to each other with regards their change in magnitude (brightness). The first star is Chi Cygnus that is a Mira type star that is increasing in magnitude and is currently at about magnitude +8.5  It is due to get at its maximum brightness in late September when it should get to +5 or even brighter. Last August during its last maximum, it was as bright as +3.8 and had never been that bright in over 140 years. It will be interesting to see how bright it gets this time around.

The other star doing the opposite is R CrB and normally, this is a easy star to see in binoculars at magnitude +6 but at the moment, you need a good telescope as it has faded to +12.5 and still fading. This star began to fade from view in early July and was last in fade in 2003. So these events don't happen too often. In the attached image, the camera is unable able to image the star as it is too faint to see.

Hiroshi Abe discovered this nova on 8th August at a magnitude of 9.4 and has not been much brighter since. I imaged it with a small camera and it was visually estimated at magnitude 10.3 The nova can be seen about 1.7 degrees north west of gamma sagitta.

There are no sunspots visible today and there has been no spots since the 9th. In H-aplha light, there have been many small solar prominences and today, a large example can be seen on the northwestern limb. Warning: Never Look at the Sun with any unprotected optical equipment. You may risk permanent blindness!

Had a go at imaging the ISS with a 2.5x barlow tonight. Only frame that has a reasonable image is attached. The space shuttle Endeavour is due to launch to the ISS on Wednesday.

Lovely solar prominence on the Sun's south east limb. On the solar disc is a very bright area surrounding sunspot NOAA 10966. The sunspot is at 5° S, Long 067°   Warning: Never Look at the Sun with any unprotected optical equipment. You may risk permanent blindness!

Large solar prominence on the SE limb today. Attached image is through a Solarscope 50mm H-alpha telescope.

Warning: Never Look at the Sun with any unprotected optical equipment. You may risk permanent blindness!

Obtained first image through a 10" F/7.5 Newtonian of the planet Venus. The planet was easily seen with the naked eye in a nice deep blue sky, once you knew where to look! Through the telescope, Venus shows a 36.6% phase at a magnitude of -4.4. Distance to the planet being 0.54au ( about 50 million miles).