Per aspera ad astra - Full moon is coming

Moon will soon be in full. It's not the best time for astro photographers. Simply because it's facing sun and there aren't many shadows on its surface and it looks a bit flat. You can get nicer results if you wait until the moon is in its first or third quarter. But let's face it, with Irish weather you do astrophotography when you can and not when you want.

Below another two pictures, I took recently. As you can see on the second picture finally I managed to get magnification and we can see some features on the satellite surface.

Next step for me will be to get it all sharp. Hopefully you we'll see it on the next set of Moon's pictures.

     

 

 

What I really like about photographing moon, is that it changes colours. I guess it has something to do with moon reflecting sunlight. So when you start blocking the light (by using astronomy equipment), the moon shows it's real colours.

Per aspera ad astra - Jupiter

Finally I've got a chance to photograph Jupiter. It's that big flashy spot in the middle, the biggest planet in our Solar System. Jupiter is a gas giant with it's 317 Earth masses. Around planet orbits 64 confirmed moons.
On a picture four of them, so called Galilean moons discovered sometime between 1609 and 1610 by Galileo (2 on the right and 2 on the left). They are easy to spot even with binoculars.

I know picture isn't the best and as it happens, I discovered I need more and more equipment. Apparently my telescope is too fast (f10) for planetary imaging, optimal speed would be f30 which is easy to achieve but it costs. Then there is a problem with magnification, there's non in the above. To make long story short, I need to invest a little bit more in hardware:)

Photography wise, Sylwia's just started 2nd year of college so we are busy enough. She spent half a day on Saturday chasing somebody famous for paparazzi type shot for an assignment, thanks to pouring rain it wasn't an easy task. In the end she got a presenter from Today fm, we'll find out soon if he is enough of celebrity.