April 1st 0925 GMT Sun    There was an unexpected clear spell and I photographed the with my Mak and DSLR at my usual settings of 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. The solar disc appeared blank through my camera viewfinder ..read more

March 1st 2040 GMT Lynx and Camelopardalis   I wanted to photograph two faint and difficult constellations. Lynx is difficult and Camelopardalis is, well, worse. It was not perfectly clear but I saw some of Lynx.    I used my normal constellation setup of my DSLR at 18mm focal length, ISO 800 and 30 seconds exposure, then took some darks and hoped. I hoped in vain, as the focus was out ..read more

February 1st 1910 GMT Jupiter    Again, the weather forecasters let me down. I was hoping to try out my new camera, the same model as my older one, which was still working but with poor focus.    I set my camera at 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 2 seconds exposure, my usual settings for Jupiter's moons. Initial indications were less than encouraging.  With a bit of processing, I managed to show the moons but much haze still remained. February 1st 1215 GMT Sun   The weather forecast was for clear sky but it did not mention some thin cloud. So, despite some sun ..read more

January 1st 0210 GMT Moon and Regulus   An hour after my Moon shot, it cleared a bit more and I saw it close to Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo. I snapped it with my phone camera. January 1st 0110 GMT Moon    The old year had not long given way to the new. Astronomically speaking, 2023 had been poor, with lots of cloud.  Rather like the solar session the day before, there was lots of moving cloud. I snapped a few photos of the Moon with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second exposure.  Unfortunately, I did not get any useab ..read more

 December 1st 0030 GMT Betelguese    I had a quick look outside when letting our dogs out. Despite the prescene of nearby moonlight, Betelguese easily outshone Procyon. so I estimated its magnitude to be 0.2 ..read more

November 3rd 2120 GMT Meteor Hunt    I set my camera on my usual settings to take continuous photos. I aimed at Taurus in the hope of capturing activity from some minor showers in the area. At 2105 GMT, I caught something that I could not explain. November 3rd 1300 GMT Sun   As for the two days before, some solar photons made it through the cloud and reached my binoculars and filters. There was a new large sunspot and one of the other two had faded below binocular visibility. November 1st 1220 GMT Sun   The pale midday sunlight reached my binoculars and fil ..read more

October 5th Venus Revisited I reprocessed an image of Venus from June 24th, this time stacking 5 images. October 3rd 2150 GMT Moon and Jupiter   Conditions were very bad and only the Moon, Jupiter and Vega were visible. Even the Moon was mostly obscured by cloud. I tried several combinations of exposure times, ISO settings and focal lengths. 18mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/10 second exposure worked best. October 3rd 1105 GMT Sun   I bin scanned the Sun under moving cloud conditions and saw two sunspots near the edge of visibility in my binoculars. October 3rd 0400 GMT Ve ..read more

 September 2nd 2100 GMT Moon    I did not get the clear sky that the weatherperson promised. A lot of thin cloud was around. The Moon was low in the east and out of range of our back garden. I carried my telescope, DSLR and WiFi electronic eyepiece to a patch of land about 30 yards from our front door.   I started off with my DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure and took some full frame shots. I then switched to the electronic eyepiece and did a few close ups.     I tried to find and photograph Saturn but it was too hazy ..read more

  August 1st 0610 GMT Sun   In total contrast to recent days, I woke up to bright sunshine. My binoculars and filters showed two sunspots ..read more

 July 1st 1305 GMT Sun There was lots of moving cloud around, following a cloudy morning. I bin scanned the Sun with my binoculars and filters, to reveal two sunspots. Soon after I finally got round to fixing, or trying to fix, my 9x50 finderscope. I had some help from my friendly neighbour, Frank Spencer ..read more