moon, jupiter and venus and ISS

Taking advantage of the moon, jupiter, venus show. The ISS came through at the right time for a nice picture taken from London. 30s exposure ISO 200 on Canon 500d with 10-22mm wide angle

This picture was featured in spaceweather.com on Feb 25 2012

Volcanic ash, sunset, moon, venus and mercury

The sunset on April 16th was clearly affected by volcanic ashes in the south of London, UK.
The sunset was unusually hazy and dusty, most likely due to the volcano that erupted in Iceland a few days before and which ash plume disrupted air-traffic over northern Europe. The second picture shows an early Moon in conjunction with Venus and a very dim mercury

I took the picture from the loft of my house, using a canon eos 500d and an 18-200mm tamron lens set at 200mm for the sunset and at 25mm for the conjunction.

Spectacular conjunction

When celestial mechanics plays it well, it becomes a pure pleasure for our eyes.
One such event happened recently on Dec 1st when the moon, Venus and Jupiter got positioned together in the evening sky within a few degrees of each other.
In fact, the moon even eclipsed Venus for 2 hours.

Unfortunately, the London weather didn't allow me to enjoy it on the D-day.

So I got a picture before the show on Nov 25th and another 2 days after the show on Dec 3rd as the moon had already distanced itself from the 2 planets by 26 degrees (the moon does a full 360 degrees in the sky in 28 days or 13 degrees per day).

26 Nov, Jupiter left, Venus right and a plane light trail

3rd Dec, Moon, Venus left, Jupiter right and 2 plane trails

When the Moon flirts with Saturn...

Last 2 nights, the london skies cleared up, uncovering some cool astronomical stuff happening those days.
It was too late for Comet McNaught 2006P1, which displayed an amazing show for those who caught it in time. The brightest comet for the last 30 years at least. It lasted 4 days as she circled the sun mid January. pics here

But it was right in time to see the Moon flirting with Saturn. What an amazing vision, seeing the moon, 200 thousand miles away from us, transiting in 1/2h in front of Saturn, 821 millions miles further away. Here is a picture I've taken with my telescope and a simple digital camera...

And Here is the close-up to Saturn



Other pictures from this night are here