One of my hobbies which has developed over the past couple of years is astronomy. I'm a keen amateur astronomer and like to photograph some of the wonderful things that are on display in the night sky. That's when it's not cloudy, of course!!!
For information about my Sabbatical study on God & the Universe please follow the link below:
I'm a member of the Society for Popular Astronomy and of our local group - the Wessex Astronomical Society which is based in Wimborne.
You might be interested in some of the images I've taken. I use Meade LX90 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope with either a Nikon Coolpix 885 digital camera (for deep sky objects and the moon) or a Philip's ToUcam Pro II webcam (for the brighter planets).
Venus with a 3 day old Moon |
A close up of the previous image |
Mercury with a 2 day old Moon |
The Moon |
Close up of the lunar crater Copernicus |
Our nearest star (i.e. the Sun!) through a white light filter* |
Glorious Saturn |
Jupiter - the largest planet in our Solar System |
| The Transit of Venus* 08-06-2004 | |||
| The following
are just a tiny taste of some of the images I took during the 6 hour
period of the transit (06:22 am - 12:22 pm BST). Venus appears as a
small jet black circle against the enormous disc of the sun. For those of you who take an interest in such things - I used a 60 mm refractor telescope with Baarder Astrosolar film; an 18mm wide-angle Scopetronix eyepiece with a Baarder UV/IR cut filter and a Nikon Coolpix 885 digital camera. I connected the camera to a 14" portable TV to aid public viewing. Most were taken at ISO 100 and between 1/125 and 1/60 second exposures. |
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*VERY IMPORTANT - NEVER EVER LOOK AT THE SUN THROUGH A TELESCOPE OR BINOCULARS AS YOU WILL CERTAINLY SUFFER PERMANENT EYE DAMAGE & PROBABLY BLINDNESS. The photographs that you see here were taken using a proper white light filter that screens out 99.999% of the sun's intensity. Don't take any risks with your eyes.