James Webb Space Telescope.

JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

Can't wait for this!

Image credit

Venus 7th May 2007

Venus 5th May

Bye Bye Saturn

Scopes back... game on.

My scope mount is back and fixed from David Hinds. New RA motor, fixed under warranty... now that makes a change.

Took this image of Venus last night. Venus is a tricky planet to image... I'm finding out.
I don't think the scope was properly cooled down either. But it's nice to be out again. :-)


These are good, Re-processed Venera images by Don P. Mitchell. Space.com
Two Perverse Questions about Venus, from Don's Blog.

Saturn tilt 2006 to 2007

Here's a small animation showing the change in Saturn's ring from 2006 to 2007.

Click on image to view.

Good seeing... but.. ummm... no mount for the scope!

I can't believe some of the seeing that we've had here recently. And my mount is still bust. :-(

New website.

I've quit NTLworld and gone with AOL, therefore I've created a new website on Google web.
Astromick, the website.

It's not finished yet, but is a work in progress.

Cassini images of Saturn

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
From kokogiak Flickr collection.

This is big... in fact, it doesn't get any bigger!

Universe Scale.

We're at the bottom, here is the original graph... beware, it's big!

Here's a nice interactive version on the Nikon?? site.

This is smart... solar system bodies larger than 200 miles

kokogiak

Astronomy Sketch of the Day.

Drawings and sketches of an astronomical nature. Just found this.

I love this one:-

Venus and Moon tonight - 19th April 2007

My scope mount is still in the DHinds workshop undergoing repairs :-(, I've never seen so many clear nights since it's been in dry dock... still my point and shoot is still working... so here's the Moon & Venus.

Uranus rings 'were seen in 1700s'

From BBC website. What a great story.

Montes and Archimedes - re-processed.

This would be a good idea.

http://www.lpod.org/?p=1025

Tycho: from the big pan of 28th March 2007

Here is Tycho with an extra section on the right that wasn't used in the big pan.
3 image mosaic, using 2.5x TV Powermate. Slightly increased in size.
I love that stream of ejector that comes out from Tycho at the 4 O'Clock position.

I want this guys observatory!

From the Cloudy Nights Forum:-

Hadley Rille from March 2007

4x Imagemate image. Nearly the same sun angle when the crew from Apollo 15 landed.
Hadley mountain is top of image, half in shadow with rille below. They landed in the middle, between the rille and the mountain.
You can also make out St. George crater, just on the corner of the rille as it takes a right turn going South.

Apollo 15 image of the top part of the rille taken from lunar orbit.

Pan taken from red arrow indicator position above, showing the view looking down the rille with Hadley mountain to the right.

Mount problem.

Hmmm... this is annoying, I found out last night that my Celestron mount has a problem (good seeing as well).

It has what is known in the trade as a 'run away slew' fault.

I've done some extensive work trying to sort out the problem, with the help of Cloudy Nights Forums, but I think I'm going to have to send it off for repair.

So it could be a little while until I'm back in action.

Looks like I'll have to go through all my old backups and do some processing.

Look at the state of this! Contrail city.

I went into my garden this morning and snapped this. I didn't realise that Swindon was under so many flight paths.

Saturn & moons composite 2nd March 2007

Amazing stuff.

Space shuttle makes emergency landing at Tri-Cities Regional Airport

A REMARKABLE FEAT

Americans Defeat Russians in First Space Quidditch Match

Plato & Clavius mosaic from the 28th March 2007

The Moon Highlands BIG mosaic 28th March 2007

Click here for full size version. I had good seeing throughout the whole of the session of 20 images, each produced from a 1000 frame avi.

Clavius detail: This was the first captured image from the above, slightly enlarged and enhanced.

Tycho

Copernicus 28th March 2007

4 image mosaic using 2.5x Powermate.

Plato & Alpine Valley

Strange Tycho

Ptolemaeus and Plato

Saturn

4x Imagemate & 2500 frames.

Ina Caldera... just

Ina Caldera I've been trying to track this one down for ages, I think I've got something, the seeing wasn't very good though, a lot of high frequency interference.


I'm not too sure that I'm picking up some vibration from the nearby A419 road :-( It seemed very busy tonight.

Here's a better view by Wes Higgins.

Hadley Rille top left.

Saturn and moons 25th March 2007

Here is a composite of Saturn and its moons taken tonight.

Update

I've just updated a load of Lunar images from April 2006. Twas a good session :-

Saturn from last year

I was sorting out my DVD archives and came across a few Saturn AVI's that I haven't processed before.
Here's an old one from last year.

Moon 21st March 2007

20 image mosaic... reduced a little bit ;-)

Moon & Venus 21st March 2007

Earthshine 21st March 2007

Picture taken through 32mm EP.

Composite of an under and over exposed image taken through 32mm EP.

Victoria crater fly over video

Here's another nice video taken at Victoria crater by MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).

Wohba!

This is nice... The first Quicktime VR from another planet!

This picture was taken by the NASA robot "Spirit" over the course of 5 months. The "McMurdo panorama" is a combination of more than 1400 individual pictures which were taken when the lack of sunlight didn't allow the rover to move during the Marsian winter.