South West Herts
Astronomical Society

As I could not get a telescope onto the Eclipse, I took these pictures on my small digital Camera with a 1 inch spotting scope attached to the front, set to 24 magnification. The bright picture shows the shadow of the ISS on the cloud tops and was taken without a Sun Filter. The camera saw it as f 7.6 at 1/1000 and ISO 64

The 2nd picture I used a Mylar filter which the camera saw as f 4.4 at 1/120 and ISO 1000. I enhanced this 2nd picture and it showed on the right hand side of the disc another what I think is a cloud top shadow of the ISS, though I can not be sure of this

Whilst searching through my Astro folders I came across this picture. It is of a Sundog that I took whilst travelling towards Hemel Hempstead on the 26th July 2010. It was taken with my digital camera at f 8 at 1/136 ISO 100. I have cropped the original and enhanced it with Photoshop.

Last Saturday evening around 20.00 hours I picked up a message from Spaceweather.com say that the Earth was being bombarded and an Aurora could be around.

Around 23.30 hrs I looked north (my darkest part of the sky) and saw what looked like a massive injection of sodium lighting appearing in the sky.

As the sky in this sector is normally very dark I realised that this must be an Aurora.

So I reached for my small digital camera and starting taking snapshots. In all I took about 20 at varying zoom settings.

Partial Solar Eclipse 01/08/2008

This is the best that I could manage. It was taken through thick cloud at 10.45 am - just past maximum, with my small digital camera.

Taken through a 4 inch telescope on low power - exposure was 1/60 @ F2.8.

Click on image for larger version

Taken at 18.30 30th March 2008.
Have tried to find some sun spots recently - but there weren't any - very disappointing. However, today I set up the small telescope onto the sun and lo and behold there was a sun spot!
I took snapshots by holding my small digital camera to the eyepiece. Then combined them in Paintshop Pro before cleaning them up in Adobe Photoshop elements.

Click on image to see full sized version.

2 separate pictures of the different coloured setting Suns.
Evidently the differences are due to what was in the atmosphere at the time according to Alan Davies.
All I can tell you about the photos is that they were taken on ASA 200 standard C41 print film, and they were taken some years ago at different times. I found them tucked away in an old film envelope.
I reproduced them by scanning them into my computer.
I suspect, and this is pure guesswork, that the mauve one was due to possible presence of sea mist, as I think it was taken at Bournemouth in September 2003. The red one was possibly due to volcanic dust being present in the atmosphere, but again this is pure guesswork.

Click on the images to see larger versions.

I have just had a film developed - one long time exposure shot showed up a couple of persieds, taken last July.
The length of the star trails suggests that the exposure was somewhere around an hour long.
The exposure also shows the inevitable aircraft trails and the summer twilight glow, the camera being pointed in a north easterly direction.
The film was ASA400 and it was in my old Praktica PL noval SLR Camera, using a wide angle f2.4/35 lens.
It was taken on the night of the 12/13th July, somewhere around midnight.
(Click on the image to see the full view)

A picture of comet Holmes, taken on the 30th of October at 20.30 hours.
The Moon had just risen and was already flooding the sky with its light.

The picture is a compilation of 21 five second exposures taken with my small digital camera through my 4inch telescope.

I stacked the exposures with Registax before I cleaned the resultant picture up using my recently acquired Photoshop Elements, which I am still learning to use.

I hope to turn the 10inch telescope on it in the next few days

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Click here for details of the German radio telescope at Effelsberg - collected by Pat during his visit to the site.

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Sirius B

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Another image of the Moon with Jet trail

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Venus over Majorca
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