On Thursday October 23, 2014, most of North America was treated to a partial solar eclipse. A partial eclipse is when the moon’s alignment between the earth and sun only blocks a portion of the sun from the view point of an observer on Earth. For those of us along Read more…
M16 – The Eagle Nebula My MK-III camera was recently upgraded (for free) by the manufacture of the AVS camera to the MK-IV. From the Almost Heaven Star Party in West Virginia, I shot M16, The Eagle Nebula, with my Astro Video Systems MKIV video camera at f/2.8 with my Read more…
Several Raleigh Astronomy Club members, including myself, supported the International Sun-Day events at the North of Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. At the start of the event (12 noon) the weather was not at all cooperative with almost 100% cloud cover. However holes in the clouds began to appear by 2pm and by Read more…
This past Saturday, May 31st, I helped out again with the Public Outreach / Observing session put on by the Morehead Panetarium. The session was held out at Jordan Lake just west of Apex and south of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. People showed up well in advanced of the Read more…
recently purchased a color video-astronomy camera from Astro Video Systems (AVS), the Avanced Cam MKIII. First light for the camera happened to coincide with the Morehead Planetarium’s SkyWatching session for May. If I could get it working, it would be a great way to show off views of deep space objects Read more…
There was quite a bit of “Venus Transit Fever” on the Internet during the few days leading up to the transit as well as several days afterwards. The plethora of pictures, videos and articles was quite impressive. However there are 2 videos that stand out in my mind…. The first Read more…
On the afternoon of June 5th, 2012 (the morning of June 6th on other parts of the planet) the black silhouette of Venus was observed crossing the face of the sun. This passing in front of the sun is what astronomers call a transit. The next time Venus will Read more…
On my list of objects to view from my own telescope (a 1994 Celestron 8” SCT), has been Quasar 3C 273. Aesthetically speaking, this object has zero value, it looks like a very faint star. However what makes this object so interesting is its origin and its distance. Quasars are Read more…
Thursday night I spent some time with fellow RAC members Mark L.and Ian H. (separately) while at the Staunton River Star Party. We were looking through my 8” SCT for the super nova SN2012aw that had been detected last week in the Leo galaxy, M95. After much back and forth Read more…
On Tuesday November 8th, 2011 asteroid 2005 YU55 which is about the size of an aircraft carrier buzzed the Earth within 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers). As a point of reference, our moon is 238,000 miles away! Even though asteroids of this size pass by Earth frequently, the last time a Read more…