One week to partial suneclips

The waning crescent moon (68%) one week before the partial sun eclips on March 20th, 2015.

Venus and Mars

Every day Venus is climbing higher and shows up at the west, about 25°above the horizon. Almost 3h after sunset is the time Venus takes to go below the horizon. Mars is very faint and is seen below Venus. This week Mars will be seen near Uranus, reaching each other within 27'. Uranus however is about magninute 6 and needs to be watched using a small telescope.

An ultraluminous quasar with a twelve-billion-solar-mass black hole at redshift 6.30

The most luminous quasar  (quasi stellar radio sources) currently known is reported in the latest version of  Nature.
At the "borders" of the universe, 12.8 billion light years from earth, only 900 million years after the big bang this Quaser was formed. The massive black hole has a mass of 12 billion solar mass. It's not the most massive one (cfr 39 billion solar mass) but in comparison with the black hole in our milky way of 4.1 million solar mass, it's gigantic.

Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2

Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 can still be seen in constellation Perseus near Cassiopeia. Estimated magnitude 6.

Venus and Mars at the evening sky

After a couple of days cloudy skies, this evening the sky was clear to observe Venus and Mars at the evening sky. Venus and Mars close to each other in the West and the moon up and east (31% ).

Venus and Mars at the evening sky

The weather conditions are far from ideal with the upcoming fog.  I was able to oberve both Mars and Venus at the evening sky 1h after sunset and low in the West. The next days both Mars and Venus will be closer at the sky - hopefully we can observe this as weather forecast doens't look good.

Sunspot 2282

Sunspot 2282, February 15, 2015. Using my Orion XT12 with Barlow x2 and Nikon D60 in ISO 200 and ISO 400. Intensive modification using CS4.