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SKYWATCHER AUSTRALIA
We had some great photos of this week's "Super" Full Moon shared with us! Did you see it? He's a pic posted to the Sky-Watcher Australia Facebook group by Leigh Hassell of South Australia.
We'd love to see any others and feel free to post them in the comments.
For this shot, Leigh used a Sky-Watcher 102mm f5 refractor and an ZWO ASI224MC to capture the 95% illuminated waning Moon.
Thanks Leigh!
#skywatchertelescope #astrophotography #lunarphotography #lunarphases #zwo #zwoasi224mc #skywatcheraustralia
Pssst....who wants a sneak peek at the new 2019 Sky-Watcher Australia catalogue? Put your name down and you'll be among the first to get exclusive access at the start of March to the PDF version before the printed version is out.
(It's jumped to 64 pages from the 39 pages of 2018 version.😎😎)
2019 Catalogue SignUp - Sky-Watcher Australia
skywatcheraustralia.com.au
You might be hearing a bit in the news about there being a “Super Moon” tonight.
What exactly is a “Super Moon”? Is it really that different to a normal full Moon? Are they rare?
As many would know, the Moon orbits around the Earth in an elliptical orbit. It’s not totally circular. This means that sometimes the Moon comes slightly closer to the Earth (perigee) and at other parts of its orbit around the Earth (apogee) it will be slightly further away from us. It does this every orbit around the Earth or roughly every 28 days.
2019’s farthest apogee comes on February 5, 2019 at 406,555 km. The closest perigee is today, February 19 at 356,761 km. The Moon is approx. 50,000km closer during this time.
Some guru came with the term “Super Moon” to describe a Full Moon that happens to coincide with a close lunar perigee approach to Earth. It appears bigger because it is actually physically closer to the Earth and generally occurs a few times a year.
Does that 50,000km make much of a difference? As you can see from the pic, the closer Super Moon is a tad larger than a normal Moon. It’s not a massive change – but like all full Moons, will be a spectacle in in the night sky and one well worth heading out to see.
If you take any images of it, please feel free to share then in the comments!
Adam Lundie posted this image in the Sky-Watcher Australia Facebook group of the The Skull & Crossbones Nebula (NGC2467) taken with his Sky-Watcher Black Diamond/EVOSTAR 120ED telescope on a Sky-Watcher EQ8 mount using a QSI 683-WS8 Camera chilled to about -15°C. This false colour image is the result of some 27 hours of exposure!
NGC2467 is an active star-forming region approximately 20,000 light years away in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way.
This image is a false colour representation of hydrogen-alpha, sulfur-II and oxygen-III emission-line clouds, mapped to red, green, and blue respectively.
Thanks for posting this Adam!
Some tech notes:
45x 600s Sulfur-II
57x 600s Hydrogen-alpha
51x 600s Oxygen-III
Total integration 27 hours.
Hardware:
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik 6nm SHO filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Exposed for 7 nights between 11-Jan-2019 and 27-Jan-2019
Software:
Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
Captured with TheSkyX Professional
Guiding with PHD2
FocusLock live focusing
PixInsight: calibrate, align, stack, dynamic background extraction, deconvolution, denoise, curves, histogram, pixel match channel combination, background neutralization, crop.
#astrophotography
#skywatchertelescope #iamskywatcher #astronomy #qhy #qhyccd #evostar #skywatcheraustralia #pixinsight #universetoday
Great pics of the Moon by Nicci Barrett using her Sky-Watcher 200mm (8") Dobsonian telescope, standard 25mm eyepiece and iPhone 7 attached to the telescope using a smartphone adaptor.
Another example of how getting started in astrophotography doesn't require super expensive gear to start taking photos you'll amaze yourself with.
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#iamskywatcher
#dobsonian #astrophotography #lunarphotography #moon #telescope #iphone7#skywatcheraustralia