Full Moon landscape.

I just had to blog this image. I think it just happened to fall into place. The clouds, full moon and the large tree with the brown tinted branches seem to make the scene a little eerie.

Moon through cloud 20130325

Its been very cloudy over the past few weeks but looking out into the garden I noticed the Moon was trying to shine. I couldn't resist a shot at the wonderful cloud pattern.

33% Waxing Moon 20130317

Taken with a Skywatcher 500mm F7 refractor and Canon 40D Dslr Afocal.
Shutter speed of 1/30 sec ISO 250.
The Crater with the central spot is Theophilus which is 110km across.

Comet Panstarrs and the Moon 2013/03/14

I tried again tonight to get a descent image of this comet and lukily the skys cleared for a short time. The comet was supposed to be 10 degrees up from the horizon and as the sun set I scanned the sky with my binoculars with no luck. This comet is a bit dissapointing for me as I remember Hale-bopp in 1995 lighting up the sky even with the naked eye and I was expecting a repeat.

Finally after nearly an hour of searching the sky comet Panstarrs appeared as if by magic from behind a whispy cloud. It was sitting in a clear area of the sky with some thin cloud approachig.

I had already focused my 500mm skywatcher refractor on the moon using live view on my 40d so I rattled off as many shots as possible with different ISO settings from 100 to 1600.

The final comet shot was 2.5 seconds at ISO 400. F7

This lovely waxing Moon 10% lit was to far away from the comet to be  in the same shot so here it is on its own. The same scope and afocal camera was used set at ISO 100 at 1/80th of a second F7.



Comet C/20122 L4 (Panstarrs) on 13/03/2013

 

Finally after 4 days of disapointing cloudy skies it was partially cloudy. I took lots of images of the bright star just below the moon thinkung it was the comet. Browsing through the images later, I discovered the comet lurking near the horizon. Its much smaller than I thought it would be but at least I've got I my first image of a comet.

Image was taken using a Canon 40D. 

Settings were 4 second exposure, Iso 800, F/4 and focal length 111mm