Moon 65% - Copernicus Crater

Some hours without clouds and this plenty of time to observe the moon. The moon is 65% illuminated and in the center it's easy to recognize Copernicus Crater (93km). I made some more pictures using my zoom 8-24mm and installed my camera afocal. 

Low in the south you can also seen Clavius Crater (245km).

Messier Objects - 65% completed

Over the last years I observed 71 out of 110 Messier Objects.  With 65% completed, I still do miss 39 Messier Objects.  I will try to observe those within the next  months/year before taking a new challenge like the Herschel 400. Of which by the way I observed 13/400 :)

Virgo and Sagitarius will be the biggest challenge, so focus as from January onwards. 

Lunar Halo

Weather is not good to do any observations this evening due to high clouds. But because of those high clouds I could observe below lunar halo. Almost a perfect circle of 22° around the moon. This phenomen is also called a winter halo, moon ring or moon halo. 

Moon is halfway to supermoon.

This evening the moon is 55% illuminated and so halfway towards the supermoon on december 14th.
Some remarkable craters can be observed like the bright Plato Crater (109km) in the North.

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The Sun today - Combining PST & TAL picture.

The sun with sunspot AR2615 using Baader Astrosolar on TAL200K.

Using my PST40 I took some pictures in H𝜶 which I combined with the picture taken above. The combination shows both the sunspots as the sunflames in one and same picture. The effect was achieved using CS4.

Moon 44% - Hipparchus Crater

Some high clouds, about -0.5°C and the moon 44% illuminated. In the center you will see Albategnius Crater (114km) and north of it Hipparchus Crater (138km).