Dave
@astronomydave
I share photos, mostly of nature/night sky. I play guitar, bass & keyboards for fun; I share videos sometimes. Reconstructing a small prairie space. I garden a bit. I vet anyone I follow. I used to have a pretty big YouTube channel.
A lot of clouds so not much chance for meteors tonight. But I did see the Summer Triangle.
My lovely wife noticed a flower she didn't recognize on our prairie earlier this week. I took a photo and used Google Lens. Appears to be Rattlesnake Master, which would definitely be a first for our property.
Gotta love seeing fireflies in the backyard. I could even make them light up by flipping my hand over my phone's flashlight and flashing at them.
Restoring a bit of land to natural prairie is an exercise in immense patience. We planted a wide range of prairie seeds THREE YEARS AGO. Today, I finally saw FIRST THE FIRST TIME EVER on our property: Blazing star Yellow coneflower Purple coneflower (echinacea)
I was so excited we finally have Black eyed Susan's growing in our little prairie space.
Because, as always, Mercury is a tough one to capture even in the best of circumstances (like tonight) here is Jupiter and Venus at upper left and Mercury at lower right with the arrow pointing to it.
My wife has wanted one for a while, and they were on sale, so .... She is now the owner of this 200mm / 8" Dob. 😁🔭 (She was ridiculously excited. She also was not fond of the photos I took with her in them so here's the scope by itself.)
All the different robots that companies are making are admirable, I suppose, but all I want is this one so my wife and I don't have to do laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc. Is it just me?
Aristarchus is a really freaking bright crater on the Moon. Last night I photographed it when it was just past the terminator on the lunar surface. Brought out a few subtle features in that area that can be harder to see most times. 102mm Explore Scientific refractor & Pixel 10 Pro as camera.
What does the Moon look like through an 8" diameter ZEISS refractor lens? Pretty darn good, actually.
Our little prairie space was looking pretty nice today. The grasses are starting to grow after me having mowed a lot of them down last fall. It was a little breezy.
Date night last night with my lovely wife. The food was AMAZING. And I'm not even really a foodie-type person.
I searched this online and your car must have been extraordinarily unique as other 289's appear to be most fuel efficient at 55-65 mph.
Mare Crisium - the "Sea of Crises" - is a dark, oval basaltic plain in the Moon’s northeast. It formed from an ancient impact that then filled with darker lava. It is even visible naked eye from Earth! (Better thru a telescope.) The Luna 24 mission landed here, which returned lunar soil to Earth.
NGC 2264, 90 minutes, Seestar S50. This region of sky contains what's known as the Christmas Tree Cluster, and if you flip this image upside down, the "cone nebula" is at the top of the "tree" and the bright star is kind of near the base. It's a star forming region about 2,500 light years away.
I hope I continue to always be amazed at the images a mere $500 telescope can capture from my backyard in just a few hours of time. Set up my Seestar sometime after 8:30 pm last night. Carefully levelled, aligned, etc. Aimed at M42. Let it capture 1.5 hrs of data. A few editing tweaks & "Voila!"
Well, we cancelled our solar eclipse trip to Iceland. I am disappointed, but in the big picture, it's a better decision for us not to go. Anyway, here's a photo from the 2024 eclipse.
Not my photo, from a friend that lives about 3-4 miles south of me. The hail was juuuust a bit bigger there.
I started learning the acoustic guitar solo for "To Be With You" by Mr. Big a week or so ago. My fingers are actually cooperating and I may even be able to play it at speed in a few weeks. I played with a metronome tonight and it went pretty well, but I am still a good 20 beats per minute slower.
NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula in Orion. This image used the DBE (Dynamic Background Extraction) function on the Seestar app while stacking, and it helped with the moonlight present that night. But it processed a bit towards red. About 2 hours of data captured with a Seestar S50.