Astroblog

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Still more partial eclipse photos

Here are some excellent images of the recent partial eclipse of the Sun on 7 February from Tony Travaglia of Oamaru New Zealand. The crescent-shaped leaf shadows are particularly good.

Naturally the images are copyright to Tony, so do the right thing, okay?

Labels: eclipse, Observational Astronomy, photography

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:49 am 0 comments

Friday, May 04, 2007

Moonbows

The sky was clear at last, I set up "Don" the 8" scope for some some sky gazing. Of course by the time everything was set up, the sky had clouded over.

There was a bonus though. Moonbows, well actually they are corona. These are produced by produced by the diffraction of light by tiny cloud droplets or sometimes small ice crystals. Ironically, I had only the other day written to someone about this relatively rare phenomenon.

The top image is the Moon with an exposure of 6 seconds, you can clearly see the dirracted bands of colour. You can also see Antares and Jupiter and the stars in the head of Scorpius (click to enlarge).

In the bottom image, I tried to block the Moon itself, to get a better view of the rings. I don't think it worked so well.

Labels: corona, Moon, photography

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:53 pm 0 comments

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Grass Trees as far as the eye can see

Fellow SciNatterer Margaret Ruwoldt has ah one of her pictures put up as the Earth Science Photo of the Day. It is a field of Xanthorrhoea flowering in the Brisbane Ranges National Park after a bushfire. Cris Lawson has more and links to Margarets other photos at Talking Squid.

Labels: nature, photography, science matters

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:23 am 2 comments

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Delphinus II

At the Port Adelaide Festival the previous weekend there was a dsiplay of artistic dolphin scupltures, each relecting a theme of the Port and commemorating International Year of the Dolphin and the Port Adelaide's Dolphin Sanctuary.

This is Galaxia, who has galaxy symbols all over her. Sort of astronomy related.

Labels: dolphins, photography

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:11 am 0 comments