I love this.

You can read more about it from Phil Plait.

Last night I finally had a chance to dig out my telescope again. Jupiter is pretty much gone for the season, but you can’t complain about Saturn. Here are a few of my shots.

I also shot the Moon.

Mars was up there too, but it’s getting smaller and fainter plus it was right next to the Moon, so I couldn’t get a decent shot of it.

So last Friday I watched SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launch during the Weekly Space Hangout. The rocket was to launch the Dragon capsule to supply the International Space Station.

So then Saturday evening when we had a bunch of family over for Easter, I got an email announcing an ISS passing. So I thought it would be cool to show everybody.

When we were all out on the deck watching the ISS pass through the sky, people starting notice something else following it. I immediately thought it could be the Dragon capsule, but I wasn’t even sure it would be visible.

So when we went back inside, I did a little Googling, and yep, we saw the Dragon capsule!

Talk about a perfect time to check out the ISS. I don’t often go out to look at it. I mostly do it when people are over. People are always amazed at how bright it is and how they have never seen it before. If you want to know when it passes over just sign up for alerts here.

I love sharing my limited space knowledge and views through my telescope. I think most people love all things space, they just don’t take the time to do a little research and look up.

You’ve probably seen tons of pictures of the total lunar eclipse last night, but these ones are mine.

So last night was finally a clear night that wasn’t super cold and I was able to spend a good hour outside with my telescope. Here are the images I took.

The Moon is always the easiest. Hopefully next week I can get some eclipse shots!

I got a pretty good shot of Jupiter last night. It’s my best one to date. If you’re curious, the moon that you can see if you look closely is Io.

Since Mars is getting closer—it will be at it’s closest point on Monday the 14th—I thought I would try to image it. Mars is hard to image because it’s so small. I need to get better Mars pictures, but I’m posting thing one anyway, because it’s frickin’ Mars!

This morning at work at around 4:00 AM I was outside looking for meteors and I noticed some of my old winter friends. Pleiades and Taurus were up, and Gemini and Orion were just peeking up over the horizon. Jupiter and Mars were also in the area. It’s a sign that winter is on it’s way. It’s already noticeably getting darker earlier. People around here hate that, but as an amateur astronomer, It’s nice when it gets dark before 10:00.

I think I’m going to get my telescope out early in the morning this week. It gives me a chance to see some of my winter friends before it gets too damn cold to be outside. It’s also been a while since I’ve seen Jupiter and even longer for Mars.

Here is my latest Saturn picture. It’s better than my last, but like most astronomy pictures, could be a little better. It was taken last week. That little speck you can see to the lower left is Saturn’s largest moon Titan. Here are the details of how I took it if you care:

Telescope: Celestron 8SE
Camera: Canon 450D taken at prime focus
1000 frames were taken and stacked with RegiStax6 and then touchups were done in photoshop.