Hubble revisits the Pillars of Creation

 

Isn't this an incredible image? The Hubble team at NASA and the ESA have revisited this iconic image to mark Hubble's 25th anniversary in orbit.  It's actually part of the Eagle Nebula, or M16.  The image was taken using Oiii and H-alpha filters to allow light wavelengths of different colours to be seen.  I'm a massive fan of the work that Hubble has done over the last 25 years, and I'm looking forward to seeing it's new images in 2015! 

image credit NASA and ESA/Hubble

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Observation Report from 29th December 2014

I was lucky this evening to have some really sharp viewing conditions, so I set up even though it was freezing out! (It stayed around zero degrees over my whole observing period.  Brrr!)

First up, the Moon was in a great position for me to get some short video to process and stack later.  I'll share the result on here when I'm finished :)

After the moon slid out of my view, I looked around the Hyades in Taurus using my 25mm eyepiece for the largest FOV I could manage. The Hyades are so beautiful, I love looking at them! After that, I had a go at splitting Alnitak which is one of my January quests, but had no luck. (you can read my other January targets here )  I did manage to split Mintaka though with a 4mm eyepiece which gives me 250x magnification.  It was a lovely sight, the larger primary star and smaller, fainter blue companion stood out really nicely.

I was coming to the end of the time I had allowed, so I thought I'd have a tinker with the alignment and the GoTo on the mount.  I haven't really ever used these elements as I wanted to learn my way around the night sky.  After I'd aligned it, i set it to look for Uranus, and was delighted to see it shining green in the eyepiece!  It wasn't as visually impressive as Saturn or Jupiter, and it remained a small disc even at 250x magnification, but I was really pleased to finally see it!

All in all, I was pretty pleased with my unplanned short session!

Perihelion!

So, this morning at 0636 UT the Earth was at its closest point to the Sun for this year. That seems a bit weird, as my garden thermometer says it's only 3 degrees centigrade outside! This is because at its closest the Earth is still 147,096,204 km away, and at its furthest point is only roughly 5 million km farther out - not much of a difference in the astronomical scheme of things! Earth's season's aren't therefore caused by it's distance from the Sun, but by the tilt of the Earth. And currently the Northern hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun and is in winter. Great for long nights and dark skies for observing!