Crescent moon, rapid

I took this picture not even 30 minutes ago on the roof of my condo complex and here it is ready to show off. I love digital astrophotography.

Saturn

A new first for my 5" telescope was my viewing of Saturn last night. Saturn currently rises in the eastern sky well after sunset and gets high in the sky towards midnight. I captured the image above with my small CCD camera using 0.177 second exposures stacked and averaged to bring out the details. The rings are obvious and I could convince myself that the large gap in the rings, the Cassini Division, is visible but I'll leave that to the viewer. A cloud band on the upper portion of Saturn itself may also be visible. Regardless of the details, the image definitely captures the subtle pastel colors of Saturn.

Comet McNaught

I hope everyone at least tried to see Comet McNaught during early January, it really doesn't get much easier to see a comet than it did for McNaught. Naked eye comets are fairly regular, every few years maybe, but McNaught was especially spectacular. Unfortunately for us southern California types, the comet was low on the horizon. I only saw it one night from my location, in retrospect I wish I had stopped near the ocean one night to see it well. My sad picture at top above barely admits the presence of a comet, but it's there near the center on the horizon. The image below mine shows a beautiful sunset image of the comet taken by Jens Hackmann in Bad Mergentheim, Germany on January 7.

I have now seen three naked eye comets in my life. Hyakutake in the spring of 1996, Hale-Bopp in April 1997, and now McNaught. I plan to be around when Halley's Comet makes another pass through the inner solar system, in mid 2061. I will be 86 years old, let's hope the eyes hold out.