Open Night: Mars beautiful, few see it

The night of April 26 was an Open Night at Stephens Memorial Observatory. Mars was the featured object along with a couple of star clusters, that moonless night. I feared a big crowd -- Mars can really pack 'em in -- but over the course of the night only eight visitors came. Those who did visit, however, had the best telescopic views of planet Mars that I have ever enjoyed! Seeing conditions were only "good" but Mars was at opposition only a little over a week earlier. Through the 9-inch refractor we could easily see shadowy forms on the surface of that tiny, distant world with a trace view of a polar ice cap. The seeing conditions worsened as the evening wore on and I could not find the star cluster promised (M3 - the "Beehive") to save my life! The visitors drifted away as we closed early due to increasing cloudiness. This night I wish we would have had many more visitors so that I could have shared the remarkable view!

Testing, testing...

In about two weeks (on Tuesday, April 15) there will be a total eclipse of the Moon, visible in its entirety across the continental U.S. It has been a long time since I've seen a great lunar eclipse but, if the weather cooperates, this should be a good one. As it happens, totality -- the deepest part of the eclipse -- will take place in the wee hours around 3:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time. It will be tough to stay awake for the whole show since I am firmly-imprinted with a daylight operating cycle but I'm excited at the prospect of seeing this eclipse. I decided to take advantage of the thin crescent Moon to get a little practice and some test shots of it with very little illumination. I used my tripod, Canon EOS 50D camera, and 400mm telephoto in my experiments and, by and large, am pleased with the results. (Shooting through thin clouds made it look like my lens was fogged up but it wasn't ... I checked!) In the photo the nighttime portion of the lunar disk is illuminated with bluish "Earthlight" and, along the brilliant terminator, we can see a rough edge caused by partially-lit craters. The eclipsed Moon will be floating in Earth's shadow and our planet's atmosphere will color the light reaching it. During totality our Moon should be tinted some shade of orange or red (it varies depending upon the content of our atmosphere) and will be very dark. For the eclipse I plan on setting up my six-inch Meade refractor and attaching a digital SLR camera directly to it, making it a 1,250mm telephoto lens! If this all works out (again, completely dependent upon the weather) I'll be exhausted but happy by the time dawn arrives that Tuesday.

Crescent Moon with Earthlight Image by James Guilford, April 1, 2014: Canon EOS 50D, ISO 800, f/5.6, .5-second, 400mm.