ISS Above Amsterdam crossing the constellation of Orion - (4 subframes exp. 10s f/5.6 ISO 1600 each, stacked with RegiStax)

The ISS will be visible in Amsterdam until March 20 and the next visibility window will start on April 10. Below is the list of the “best” passes over the city:

Source: Heavens-Above.com

For more information about (visible) passes of ISS, and satellites, not only in Amsterdam but for any place on Earth, visit the heavens above website. You can also follow @twisst on twitter.

170 minute black and white image of M81 and M82 - Credit: Lightbuckets.com

The inverted image (below) reveals much more that meets the eye. The wispy tendrils seen in the inverted and stretched image are known as Galactic Cirrus. They are high galactic latitude nebulae that are illuminated not by a single star (as most nebula in the plane of the Galaxy are) but by the energy from the integrated flux of all the stars in the Milky Way.  These nebulae clouds, an important component of the Interstellar Medium, are composed of dust particles, hydrogen and carbon monoxide and other elements.

Inverted image of M81 and M82 showing the Galactic Cirrus between the galaxies - Credit: Lightbuckets.com

Galactic Cirrus was first found in plates in the Palomar Sky Survey in the mid 1960′s. Alan Sandage investigated them further in 1975 while working with the Palomar 1.2m Schmidt Telescope. The surface brightness of these structures is about 25 mag. or even fainter, which makes them extremely hard to capture with most amateur equipment.

The galaxy group, consisting of M81, M82, NGC 3077 and NGC 2976, is the nearest galaxy group to our own local group (which contains the Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds, M33, and the M31 – M32 – M110 system). At 12 million light years distance, the nearby proximity of galaxies M81 and M82 makes them one of the most spectacular sights in the spring sky.

- The images used in this post have been taken by Alvin Jeng during a test run of the Lightbuckets’ LB0002 – a 0.2m Newtonian Astrograph.

Waxing Gibbous Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

(Compare the Moon with photos from January 25 and January 20)

My next target was the open cluster Pleiades (M45). The effects of close proximity with the Moon tonight is visible on the left side of the photo.

Open star cluster Pleiades (M45) through Canon 450D ISO 1600 f/8 exp. 10s

Finally, I turned the camera towards the constellation of Orion and one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky – The Orion Nebula (M42).

The Orion Nebula (M42) through Canon 450D ISO 1600 f/8 exp. 10s

At the terminator near the top, the edge Sinus Iridum (“Bay of Rainbows”), the plain of basaltic lava that forms a northwestern extension to the Mare Imbrium, is clearly visible. To the south of Mare Imbrium is a prominent lunar impact crater named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Just past the terminator on the night side near the south pole is the Cabeus crater where the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) ended its mission impacting the lunar surface on October 9, 2009.

Photo of waxing gibbous Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

The position of the Cabeus crater with respect to Lunar maria (Click to embiggen) - Source: Virtual Moon Atlas

Fortunately, freezing out on the roof terrace wasn’t a complete waste of time as I managed to take the following shot of the crescent Moon [click to embiggen].

Photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

In the photo above, 25% of the surface is illuminated. At the time, the Moon was at the distance of 400,438 km only a few hours after reaching the apogee (January 20, 2010 at 14:55 GMT). Chromatic aberration, caused by the failure of the primary lens to focus all colors to the same point due to different refractive index for different wavelengths of light, is noticeable on the edges (green in the bottom left, red in bottom right, and blue in top right) but quite obvious in the original (uncropped) image [~2mb] with the resolution of 4272px x 2848px.

As there is no need for colors in lunar images, I was quite happy to “correct” the chromatic aberration by setting the image [click to embiggen] to gray-scale:

Grayscale photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight (eq and exp. details same as above)

Update 2: This is what people in Africa, the Maldives and India saw on Friday as they looked skyward.

Update 3: NASA Earth Observatory posted this photo of India and the Bay or Bengal from space.  The shot was taken at 07:15 GMT by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The shadow spans a north-south distance of about 300 kilometers on the surface, with the darkest part near the mid-point of the span.

The Moon's shadow falling on India and the Bay of Bengal during the January 15 annular solar eclipse - Credit: NASA/Aqua - Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

After the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century on July 22 last year (the longest until Jun 13, 2132), today’s annular solar eclipse is another record holder. Its duration will be unmatched until December 23, 3043. 

The eclipse was visible from within a 300-km-wide track that traversed half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s antumbral shadow began in Africa and passed through Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia. After leaving Africa, the path crossed the Indian Ocean where the maximum duration of annularity reached 11 min 07.8 s.. The central path then continued into Asia through Bangladesh, India, Burma (Myanmar), and China. A partial eclipse was seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, which includes eastern Europe, most of Africa, Asia, and Indonesia.

The narrow stretch of 300 km width across Central Africa, Maldives, South Kerala (India), South Tamil Nadu (India), North Sri Lanka, parts of Burma and parts of China from which an annular solar eclipse was observed - Credit: NASA/GSFC - F. Espenak

One of many expeditions that traveled around the world to observed the first annular eclipse of this decade chose a coastal city of Varkala in India as the observation site. Below are a few selected shots from a larger collection of some truly amazing photos.

Annular Eclipse from a coastal town of Varkala, India. Baily's Beads prior to 2nd contact - Credit: W. van Kerkhoff

Annular Eclipse from a coastal town of Varkala, India. Baily's Beads at high resolution, just before 2nd contact - Credit: T. Kampschulte

The Ring of Fire is closed, but just barely; it measures a few arc seconds only in places in this super-sharp telescopic image - Credit: T. Kampschulte

Many amateurs took beautiful photos with a great variety of equipment ranging from a simple cell phone 2-3 MP to professional cameras. The next image is a mosaic of 36 photos taken during a period of three hours by Surajram Kumaravel.

A series of 36 photos shot from Chennai during the January 15th 2009 Annular Solar Eclipse. Canon Powershot S3 IS, ISO 60, 72mm, f/7.8, 1/15 sec. Shot in Raw and converted to B&W using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and stitched together using Adobe Photoshop - Credit: Surajram Kumaravel

Partial Eclipse at sunset - Credit: @dragonsfanatic

The photo above depicts a partially eclipsed sun touching the horizon during a sunset from Chatan, Okinawa, Japan. See this flickr photostream for the entire sunset sequence.

This composition of 26 photos displays the path of the Sun and the Moon on the sky during the annular eclipse - Credit: Sriram Ramani

Photo of partial solar eclipse also showing the Sunspot 1040 - Credit: a.M.m.a.d.z

For more photos visit the Solarwatch gallery.

Solarwatch Gallery

At least 34 meteors are included in this composite image as they rain through Australian skies during the annual Geminid Meteor shower - Credit: Phil Hart

At the end of three days of astrophotography at the Leon Mow Dark Sky Site in Victoria, Australia, Phil Hart captured about 34 Geminids in the composite image above. For two hours, Phil’s Canon 5D MKII set at 3200 ISO kept taking 8 second-long exposures through a 24mm f1.4 lens, all on a Vixen GP-DX equatorial mount. The resulting image is a composite of those 8 second shots stacked against a single 2 minute exposure capturing surrounding stars and the Milky Way through the constellation Orion and Canis Major with Sirius at the top. The image may seem to be inverted to those of us who are used to the sky viewed from the northern hemisphere. Of course, having been taken in Australia, the constellations appear upside down.