Astronomy photography. A stargazer's blog.

A blog containing astronomy photography. Both my own photography with telescope and separately with cameras, but also photos from other sources. Located in The Netherlands.

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Moon from 23rd March, 2015. Tech: Sky-watcher 130/650PDS with Canon 600D, untracked, unguided.

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Moon and Venus skydance.

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Crescent Moon from The Netherlands.

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Moon and Venus sinking in the west, shot 22nd of March 2015.

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Taking my astrophotography to the next level. Here a little Messier M3, shot with non-telescopic equipment: just a Canon 600D dslr and Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 lens. Total exposure: 4 minutes. 

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Moon, shot on July 20th this year.

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The south part of the Milky Way from Tenerife, El Teide mountain range. Tech: Nikon D3, Tamron 28-75 @ 28mm, ISO 2000, 20 sec. As you can understand, it was an awesome sight for me as an amateur astronomer. More coming up soon! :)

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Water detected on the Moon: magmatic water has been detected on the Moon. This is water that originates from deep within the Moon's interior. The equipment used was India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which carries NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) 

A quote:

“This surficial water unfortunately did not give us any information about the magmatic water that exists deeper within the lunar crust and mantle, but we were able to identify the rock types in and around Bullialdus crater,” said co-author Justin Hagerty, of the U.S. Geological Survey. “Such studies can help us understand how the surficial water originated and where it might exist in the lunar mantle.”

More info: http://www.universetoday.com/104380/evidence-of-internal-moon-water-found

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You are here. Earth. Even though you feel big some days, remember that you're just an instant in time of cosmos, and physically an atom's size. Earth could fit three times in Jupiter's great red spot, and let's not get started on its size compared to our Sun. All the way to the right, next to blueish Neptune, are to small celestial objects: Pluto and Charon. For all humanity, except those on board the ISS, the above picture is true. Where are we? We are here, Earth, the 3rd rock from the Sun.

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How to launch a Space Shuttle: Riding the Booster with enhanced sound. Enjoy :)

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Just one day after full Moon, shot an hour ago. After the Sun, here's the second brightest object in the sky: our Moon. Shot with Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 and TC17 teleconverter at 340mm.

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The Sun in all its beauty. Shot by a fellow Dutch amateur astronomer on 19th of August, 2013 it shows several sun spots (the dark areas) and flares / filaments. Next time you look at the Sun, don't think of it as a boring hydrogen star. Think of it as a flaming globe of nuclear fission hurling photons our way at 300,000 kilometers per second! Photo credit: Christiaan1990 from Astroforum.nl

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The NASA Kepler space craft will not be fully recovered. Announced today, the attempts to return Kepler to full working order will be stopped. The team involved will be looking into other tasks it can perform. Two of Kepler’s four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft, have failed. The first was lost in July 2012, and the second in May. Engineers’ efforts to restore at least one of the wheels have been unsuccessful. The Kepler mission was as follows:

To determine how many Earth-size and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone (often called "Goldilocks planets")[57] of a wide variety of spectral types of stars.

To determine the range of size and shape of the orbits of these planets.

To estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems.

To determine the range of orbit size, brightness, size, mass and density of short-period giant planets.

To identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques.

Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems. With the above in mind, Kepler has been succesful in finding many exoplanets in the so called Goldilocks zone. Further reading: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/an-ode-to-kepler-the-planet-hunter/278738/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)#Objectives_and_methods

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Perseid meteor said hi. After 2000+ shots in timelapses the past 4 nights, I finally caught one. Clouds and looking the wrong way (west instead of north-east) kept me from capturing one sooner.

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The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237) shows its beauty in many colours. In the center, young stars formed 4 million years ago clear a hole in the center of the nebula. Its distance to Earth is 5000 light-years, while the size of the nebula is 100 light-years.

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110214.html

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ISS chased by HTV4. Ever shot two space craft just seconds after each other? Last night, I did. Had set up my camera for a 500 shot timelapse sequence, but the clouds quickly put 450 of those in the waste bin. However, at the very first starting frame (talk about luck) of the timelapse, the ISS showed itself just above the trees in the bottom of the pic (first of the four images in the sequence). On the fourth image you can see the 'blip' at the top of the image. These were 30 second shots, so this all happened within 2 minutes from eachother.

That's the Japanse HTV4 (Kounotori, or white stork) resupply space craft about to dock with the ISS. A video of ISS capturing the HTV4 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAWo0HjUyOc&feature=youtu.be and image of the capture here: https://twitter.com/tweetsoutloud/status/365889351390998529

More about the vehicle: http://iss.jaxa.jp/en/htv/mission/htv-4/

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It's full of stars. Even though I live in light polluted Netherlands, this pic shows a bit of the Milky Way and many, many stars.