Lovely full moon low in the south east this evening. Full Moon occured over 3 hours ago (17.05hUT)

New camera and first test image of the sun. No sunspots today so a bit of a boring picture I'm afraid. Sunspot activity is on the rise though so hopefully some better images to see in the future...as long as the clouds stay away!

The sky was nice and steady this morning so I made an image of Jupiter through the 8 inch telescope. The Great Red Spot is just coming into view on the left limb. The moon Europa is to the left.

Have been testing a new telescope and camera set up to image the space station. Attached is the first run. Some improvements to make

Jupiter is currently missing one of its prominent equatorial cloud belts. The South Equatorial Belt is missing in the attached image. The belt should re appear in a number of months time. The Great Red Spot is also very prominent now and I don't recall seeing it so orange/red before. Even in poor seeing (sky steadiness) conditions, the spot was easy to see.

On the morning of 13th October, the brilliant Venus was seen to pass close to the much fainter Saturn. The angular distance between them being 33.9° which is about a moons diameter. Venus shines at magnitude -3.9 and is at a distance of 1.53 au. (229 000 000km / 142 000 000miles). Saturn is much fainter at +1.1 and is at a distance 10.37 au. (1 551 000 000km / 964 000 000miles).

Although the planet is low as seen from the Isle of Man, the magical Registax 5 allows some fine details to be seen upon the clouds of Jupiter.

The ISS is currently home to a member of the Isle of Man Astronomical Society. Her name is Nicole Stott who is the wife of Chris Stott, Chairman of ManSat. Attached is an image of the ISS and the space shuttle 'Discovery' that had undocked and was on its long journey back home. Nicole remains on the station until November when she will return on STS-129.

After the IoMAS meeting at the observatory, some of the membership used the telescope to have a look at Jupiter. Even though the planet was low down as seen from the Isle of Man, a fairly decent image was had. I imaged the planet with a web cam and a fairly decent image was obtained considering the seeing conditions. The Great Red Spot can be seen on the central meridian of the planet. To its left, a darker brown spot is also seen.

The moon Io is to the left of the planet.

While imaging Jupiter, I was aware of a dark spot in the south polar region (SPR) of the planet and initially thought it was a shadow transit of one of Jupiter's moons. Having checked this, there was no shadow in the SPR so assumed a dark weather feature. Later found out from John Rogers of the BAA that it was a possible impact site previously discovered by Anthony Wesley in Australia. What a fine catch!

Imaged some of the less observed moons of Jupiter this morning. Himalia (J6) was the easiest of the two that I imaged, being at magnitude +15 while Elara (J7) was +16.9  In the Himalia image, glare from the planet Jupiter can be seen as white streaks across the image.

On the 18th June, NASA launched 2 probes to the Moon on an Atlas V rocket. The probes are LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite). LRO is now currently in orbit around the Moon and sending back high resolution images of the lunar surface. LCROSS  is currently in a large orbit around the Earth but on the 9th October, the probe will be deliberately crashed into a shadow filled crater on the lunar south pole. Currently, LCROSS is a Centaur rocket with an attached Shepherding Satellite. Prior to impact, they will separate and the Shepherding Satellite will have a clear view of the Centaur impacting the Moon. Four minutes later, the Shepherding Satellite will also crash into the Moon, after traversing the debris cloud that the Centaur rocket makes. At the same time, various ground based telescopes will be monitoring the event. It is hoped the analysis of the debris cloud will show evidence of water.

Attached is an image of the combined space probe in orbit around the Earth.

A sunspot group has appeared during the last 17hrs in the southern hemisphere. Known as NOAA 11024, it is a type Dsi group and is active with B-Class solar flares. This is the most active group seen this year.

During the night of 18th June until daybreak on the 19th, mysterious luminous clouds could be seen over the north western to north eastern sky. These clouds known as Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) are very high at 50km to 85km  in the mesosphere and it is a current area of research as to why they appear. A possible connection has been suggested with solar activity with more NLCs during solar minimum which the Sun is currently at. They appear to luminous an electric blue or white colour. I saw yellows and light greens in some of the clouds last night as well, but these colours may be due to the low altitude of the clouds as seen from my location. Beautiful to see.

Imaged the dwarf planet Pluto thorough the IoMAS's observatory telescope. I identified Pluto after using Astrometrica software and it has a  magnitude of +14.22 (Unfiltered). Distance to Pluto is 30.66 astronomical units (2,851,000,000 miles). Pluto will reach opposition ( opposite the Sun in the sky) the 23rd June in the constellation Sagittarius.

We are approaching the 40th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 and the attached image shows the landing site on the southern end of the Sea of Tranquility. The Sea of Tranquility looks rather barren and flat and was chosen as a first lunar landing site for this reason.

Over to the west we see a pair of craters called Sabine and Ritter, both about 30km wide. Further west is the Rima Ariadaeus which is a graben fault line that stretches a distance of 220km and is between 4 and 5 km wide and 800 meters deep.

Over on the east side of the image is a very bright crater named Censorinus. This crater is a 3.8km wide.

We had cloud cover in the Isle of Man on Sunday evening, so the close conjunction of the Moon with Mercury and the Pleiades nearby was missed. 24hrs later, the Moon has moved away from Mercury but the view was still interesting. In the attached image, Mercury is visible as a star just above the rooftop. The Pleiades was also seen just above Mercury and was plainly visible in a pair of 7x50 binoculars.

A supernova designated 2009dd was found on 13th April in NGC 4088. It was imaged fom the IoMAS observatory and has a magnitude of +14.2C

The galaxy itself is a spiral type galaxy with a magnitude of +11.1 and resides in the constellation of Ursa Major. Distance to the galaxy is 46 million light years.

The ring plane of Saturn is tilted at -2.3° to Earth and looks splendid in a telescope. A small telescope will show the globe with a thin bar stuck through the planet. A large telescope with high power will show the gap between the rings and the globe and also the rings crossing the planet. The attached image shows the cloud structure on Saturn and it is possible to make out the shadow of the moon Dione upon the cloud tops of Saturn. It appears as a faint smudge to the left side of the globe, above the rings.

Distance to Saturn is 8.4 a.u. (781 million miles)

The weather here in the Isle of Man has been poor for months now and very little observing has been achieved. Monday evening was a surprise when the cloud melted away. Main target was comet Lulin that was passing a couple of degrees south of Saturn. The comet was easily seen in 7x50 binoculars and the magnitude of the comet was determined to be +5.4

The tail as seen visually was weak but is clearly seen in the attached CCD image. I did not see the comet with the naked eye from my observing location but there is a light pollution problem from here. Distance to the comet is 0.41 au (38 million miles). I note the orbital period of the comet is over 49 million years! So see it now or never!

Imaged the moon through a 6 inch refractor tonight. The attached image shows the Mare Nubium that contains the linear looking feature Rupes Recta (The Staright Wall). The feature is a fault line that runs for a distance of 110km (68 miles).

Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann orbits the sun every 14.65 years and is usually very faint. Occasionally though, it will go into outburst, increasing in brightmess by a few magnitudes. As seen on the attached file, the comet was faint when imaged 7th December 2008 but has become much brighter by the 24th January 2009. Distance to the comet is 476 million miles.

Saturn was imaged through the observatory telescope and ToUcam and the rings are now nearly edge on. A terrific sight to see visually.