Eclipse 2011

It's starting!

Close-up.

2011 is a year of the 'red' eclipse.

Night Sky

From my backyard.

Awesome!

Planet Hunt

November 2011

January 2012

JUPITER - King of the planets!

First of the four 'Gas Planets'. Shot in October 2011, this giant planet is obvious in the night sky.  It takes 11.86 years to circle the Sun and only need about 10 hours to make one 'earth day'.  Its atmosphere is composed of hydrogen and helium gas and strong east-west winds in the upper atmosphere are responsible for pulling these climatic features into dark and light stripes.

Looking through the scope, one can clearly see the four moons revolving around the big planet.  This is my first encounter of Jupiter from my new telescope, what an awesome experience!

MARS - The Red planet

 I actually spotted this red 'orb' with my naked eye thinking that it was just another 'paper lantern' since it's Chinese New Year in late January.  But no, it's Mars. By 10pm (+8:00 GMT) Mars is already up at 40deg altitude; and it's easy to spot - it's bright red.  Because of its 'red' looks, it is named after the Roman god of war.

Mars takes around 2 years to orbit the Sun and its 'day' is a little more than 24 hours.

SATURN - The father of Zeus (Jupiter)

Second of the Gas planets and is most popular for its rings.  The same night I located Mars, I tried my chance of locating Saturn also, so I waited till 1 am.  Unfortunately a hugh cloud cover dominated the skies. And there was the Moon.

I tried again a week later on February 5th between 12 am and 2 am, Saturn was sighted with its rings tilted at 15deg.  What a sight!

Through my scope lens it looked so clear and bright - looked unreal.  But there it was.

Saturn has no solid surface.  It is surrounded by layers of gas and traces of water. The gases comprises of metallic liquid hydrogen, liquid hydrogen and helium.  A vicious mix!

It orbits around the Sun and on itself right the same as Jupiter's.

And last, but not least....

                                                  VENUS - The brightest of them all.

February 25th, 2012

It is sometimes called 'Earth's sister planet' because of their similarities in size, mass and structure.  Though its name suggest a more 'feminine' character but Venus does hide a dark secret underneath its deceiving looks.  

Its atmosphere is 90 times greater than Earth's, meaning on its surface, we would be crushed.  Much akin to 1km below the surface of Earth's oceans.  While much of Venus' atmosphere is packed with carbon dioxide and lots of sulfer dioxide on the surface, this makes Venus the hottest planet in the our solar system! Welcome to 'hell' as scientists would describe the planet. Literally.

I call it the 'greenhouse effect' planet.  Venus shine so bright is because of its cloud-based atmosphere like ours and the elements that lurk underneath.  Looking through the telescope, Venus looks pale and featureless, almost serene.  In actual fact, the true colours of this planet are reddish-brown.

Venus and Uranus are the only two planets in our system that have a 'retrograde' orbit round the Sun.  While all the planets turn in a counter-clockwise direction, both these planets turn clockwise. 

One 'Venusian' day, is 243 (Earth) days - one of the slowest of all planets. Venus orbits the Sun in about 7 months.

In all, it was worth it.  It took me 4 months to be able to photograph Venus properly, as of now, its an 'Evening star'.  It was difficult to photograph towards the setting Sun, plus it was always cloudy, being so close to the Equator.

My next goal is to catch Uranus and some asteroids that are wondering in the skies above me, waiting to be 'blogged'!! Lol!!!

When Evening Comes

When I look out my window on some evenings, this is what I see.

 Kota Kinabalu has one of the best sunset views.

Beauty has its drawbacks too, I wished i would have clear skies often.  But yeah,..these are the conditions you'd get over this side of the world.

Sighting Jupiter.

Mars, from my backyard.

Moon and Jupiter

Astro Setup

Celestron Nexstar 4 SE equipped with 'red-dot' guide scope and fitted into the barrel, is a Neximage CCD imager connected via USB to my Macbook Pro 15" laptop for image editing and processing. '4' means the diameter aperture is 4" wide - this correspond to the the size of the mirror as well.

The bigger the mirror, the brighter and clearer the image will be.  And with that comes a hefty price tag too!!

It is a 'Go-To' mount.  Just punch in a list of celestial objects you want to see and it will slew towards the position of the object selected by you.  But first you must enter the coordinates and details of your location into the scope's handheld computer so that the scope 'knows where it is on the Earth'!  Get it?



Celestron Products.

I not only have the Neximage CCD to photograph the sky but I also utilise my old Canon Digital iXUS400 camera to take different shots.  The camera is mounted onto a special 'adapter' made for this type of camera where the camera lens
is positioned over the telescope lens.

I bought it off eBay for just US$20.00!  But I wish to get a simple and cheap SLR/DSLR body only with controls for ISO and time-based captures for Deepsky Objects.  This camera can be fitted with a 'T-adapter' for larger cameras to the back-end of the telescope.

My lens set (6 pieces) which I bought it online on promotional price for only the equivalent of RM403, and this includes 7 planetary filters  In Malaysia one lens costs RM180!

In the future, I would like to get a C8 SGT (8") for some serious astro viewing and photography.

 C8 SGT (XLT) Schmidt cassegrain telescope. Go to Celestron.com for more info.