The "Super" Moon

So I managed to make one good reasonable photo of the so called "Super" Moon – enjoy!

The "Super" Moon

They Are Here! *

* Let me explain:

• By "they" I mean ET, extraterrestrial intelligent life. 
• And by "are" I mean "maybe, possibly", IF ET exists (and that is still a very big IF). 
• And by "here" I mean the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud, several dozens AUs out there (so not actually "here")

On the blog Centauri Dreams there was a nice series (Parts one, two and three) how humanity's sphere of existence could gradually, over generations, spread out, hopping from comet to comet, until it reaches our neighbouring solar systems.

And well, if there is not a "Great Filter", and if we presume that ETs exist (and came into existence long before us), they could have settled our Milky Way galaxy within a mere 100 million years (hopping from star to star, as I read somewhere, I unfortunately forgot). So it is is possible that ETs came already to our solar system, and has settled in the Oort cloud, waiting until we come to make first contact (ala the Zoo Hypothesis).

So lets get going, lets go explore the Oort cloud, see what's there, make our living there. Even if ET does not exists, we need to go out there – for science, and for humanity.

Mind Blowing

Cosmography of the Local Universe from Daniel Pomarède on Vimeo.

(via)

Triple Conjunction – Second Try

Second time's the charm for my image of the triple conjunction? Well not quite. While I managed to make a decent photo (this time from the right site, with the right lens and the right framing), the weather was more hazy than the last time. It makes for a nice red evening sky, alas it clouds the planets a bit. And as Jupiter has sunken much lower it was not visible when the Sun set behind the hills – that is the thing with such a motive that obstructs the horizon.

A very faint Mercury (left above center) and a much brighter Venus (above the tree-line)
If you click for the larger image you can see ε Gem (Epsilon Geminorum), a star with an apparent magnitude of 3, above and to the left of Mercury.

I am happy with the results.

After I got some shots of the triple (double?) conjunction I took some photos of the stars just to see what is possible with a 50mm (f/1.8) camera lens (aperture about 28mm) and a APS-sized DSLR on a simple tripod.

Just pointed the camera the brightest star, Vega, and took this photo with f=50mm (f/1.8) at 2.5 seconds exposure and ISO 400. 

(Contains some image editing)

The constellation Lyra – cropped from the image above.

The bright star on top is Vega (one of the brightest stars in the sky), and on the left top one can see Epsilon Lyrae (with 208 arcseconds separation between ε1 and ε2). Notice how the Ring Nebula (Messier 57) is not even a smudge with this bad seeing and in this short exposure…

[Update]
I let astrometry.net do a "blind solver" for the full size image: FOV is 24.4 deg x 16.3 deg, and pixel scale is 22.6 arcsec/pixel.

[/Update]

[Update2]
I just realized that is close to Kepler's FOV!

[/Update2]

DSLR with 50mm f/1.8 photo lens pointed in the general direction of the Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major) – colors slightly changed.

I think I got the three stars γ, δ and ε from Ursa Major (or known as Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Ursae Majoris). Pointing a DSLR at the night skies with the built-in optical viewfinder is nearly impossible for me.

Definitely not clear skies… Notice the the streak left of centre – probably a satellite. Also at the right edge of the image one can see the colourful stars 4 Dra (red giant), Kap Dra (blue giant), 6 Dra (orange giant) and HD109822 (orange giant). At the lower right one can see 2 Dra (orange) and Lam Dra (red).

[Update]
Again astrometry.net: FOV is 24.6 deg x 16.4 deg, and pixel scale is 22.7 arcsec/pixel.

[/Update]

It is a nice step for me