Howards Astronomical Adventures

: Tales From The Night Sky

  • Weak Leonids

    Friday night, November 17th, I met Phil in the Flint Hills for a night of meteor observing. The sky was clear and the temperatures were ok at low 40s. The wind was bothersome; steady 10mph or better all night with gusts up to 15 or 20mph at times. While not watching for the elusive Leonid…

  • Mercury Transit

    Well the transit is over for me; sun is too low for my location. But you could not have asked for a better day here around Lawrence. Hot and sunny, no clouds! Of course to look at the sun you need a special filter. I constructed my Baader solar filter for my AP130 scope this…

  • Andromeda Galaxy

    New Image: M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Taken at Clearfield Observatory the same night as the M45 photograph I posted a few days ago. My first good chance to use Phil Anderson’s Nikon ED 300mm lens and it worked pretty well. The field is flat. This lens does need a minus violet filter, bright stars exhibited…

  • The Pleiades

    New image: M45 The Pleiades, from Clearfield Observatory on October 28th. Also called the seven sisters, this is the finest open cluster in the night sky. The series of images used to create this photograph were taken about the time of changing off Daylight Savings Time (DST). So I gained an extra hour of darkness…

  • A Shower and A Comet

    October 21st was the peak of the Orionid meteor shower. It was cloudy in my area until Sunday so I missed the main show. This is unfortunate, the activity reported this year by various observers on mailing lists described higher than normal activity. That increase is confirmed by a report in the Meteor Activity Outlook…

  • NGC 6888

    New Image: NGC 6888, the Crescent nebula in Cygnus. From the Flint Hills on August 23rd, this is a redo of a shot I did last year at nearly the same time. This time the sky was better and I exposed much longer. Post processing of this image is also much better than last year.…

  • Orionid Meteor Shower

    The Oriniod Meteor Shower timing is very favorable this year: the moon is not a factor being new on the 22nd. This shower is a result of Halley’s comet and is fairly weak with a ZHR of around 20. I watched this shower in 2003 and saw very few meteors; certainly less than I expected.