Oh, well

Well, last night was not as clear as the previous nights. The moon was easy enough, and we did get to see Mercury through one of the telescopes before sunset (so it was still relatively high in the sky), but the haze and clouds moved in and you couldn't see it. You can see how the moon's light is diffused through the haze... See also how much the moon moves from one night to the next? Compare to Tues night.

Image details...
Camera: Canon 20Da, f/5.6, ISO 800
Date/Time: 5/7/2008 8:40:01 PM
Exposure: 0.6sec
Lens: 17.0 - 85.0mm at 35.0mm

But since we were out there, I did get some pics of the moon through my telescope ... The horizon is not great, so I couldn't get Mercury in mine. Besides which, it would still have only shown up as a dot in a photo through that scope. So here's the moon...

Why is the sky so dark considering the time I took it? Well, I applied auto-color in PS7...

Image details...
Camera: Canon 20Da, ISO 800
Date/Time: 5/7/2008 8:18:51 PM
Exposure: 1/60sec
Lens: Astro-Physics Starfire 152mm (6") f/9 refractor

Moon and Mercury

Monday night was also clear, but we had open house. Last night (tue), I had a student intern working his last night. Although it was clear, we were both working on computers inside analyzing images (me, the asteroid pics I took Sun night). About 8:50, I remembered something, jumped up, and headed outside. Had to run up the hill of our parking lot and over some to get the right angle. You can see the nice little crescent moon. Look at the larger version and you'll see Mercury as the little "star" down and left of the moon. Once I saw that I could see the Moon and Mercury, I hollered to my intern so he could take a look. Then I went about rushing to get my camera setup because of course it was all setting very quickly and as you can see, I don't have a good horizon in that direction!

Image details...
Camera: Canon 20Da, f/5.6, ISO 800
Date/Time: 5/6/2008 8:58:00 PM
Exposure: 2.5sec
Lens: 17.0 - 85.0mm at 72.0mm

I also wanted to get some zoomed in shots, so I connected the camera to my Orion Shorttube 80. By this time, they had disappeared behind the tree line so I had to go over into the landfill which has higher ground... just enough to get a few more shots...

Tonight (wed), the moon will be above Mercury and getting closer to Mars...

Image details...
Camera: Canon 20Da, f/5, ISO 800
Date/Time: 5/6/2008 9:10:02 PM
Exposure: 1.6sec
Lens: 400.0mm