I photographed Comet Lovejoy at 4.30am on Christmas morning from Riverview. I was looking east towards the city so there was a lot of sky glow. However being Christmas morning, the city sky was darker than normal. The comet was just barely visible to the unaided eye, but in binoculars it was easily visible with a tail of about 15 degrees (three binocular fields) in length.
Image details: Nikon D700, 15 sec, f10, ISO3200, 60mm lens
Peter Nosworthy
Hello observers,
The forecast for tonight is dubious – about 50% cloud cover for most of the evening.
Therefore observing tonight (Friday December 23rd) is OFF.
For those interested, Comet Lovejoy may be visible in the eastern morning sky before sunrise for the next few days.
Here are some pictures taken this morning:
Peter Nosworthy
Peter Nosworthy
For anyone not checking their emails, the Christmas Party is tomorrow night, the 20th, at Regis Hall, at 7:30PM. The format is to bring a dish, and the Society will supply drinks. See you there.
The sky looks good right now (4pm), but the forecasts are predicting cloud for both Sydney and the Blue Mountains.
Therefore observing tonight (Saturday 17th Dec.) is OFF.
We’ll try again next Friday.
Peter N
It’s 5.30pm and the sky hasn’t improved, so observing tonight (Friday 16 Dec.) is OFF.
Peter N
The forecast for tonight (Fridat December 16th) looks good.
However, the forecast of ‘mostly clear’ for this afternoon was wrong and it is still totally overcast at 4pm.
Therefore I’m going to wait until about 5.30pm to make a final decision.
Sunset is at about 8pm tonight.
If observing goes ahead I’ll be opening the gates at about 7.30pm.
Peter Nosworthy
Here is my video of the Lunar Eclipse of December 10th 2011. There was patchy cloud for the first part of the partial phase, and then it completely clouded over shortly before totality. However, about 15 minutes after the start of totality, the cloud cleared and I had a great view of the rest of the eclipse.
The eclipse images were shot with a Sony video camera and a Nikon SLR camera with a 300mm lens.
Peter Nosworthy
Just to remind those of you who might have forgot, this coming Saturday night the 10th there is a total lunar eclipse visible from Eastern Australia. It starts at 10:45 PM and is at totallity about midnight. Hopefully the weather will be better on the night. The Society will not run any program for this, as it is so late at night.
I’ll take this opportunity to remind you of the events for December. Next Tuesday the 13th will be the Theory Group at 7:45, and on Tuesday the 20th we will have the Society Christmas Party, which will revert back to the old format of “bring a dish”. I’ll get back to you with more details later. All meetings are at Regis Hall, as usual.
NSAS is pleased to be a major supporter of Macquarie Open Night on Saturday May 18th at Macquarie University. Details...
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