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.

Get email of my blog.

Do you want to receive emails everytime I post a blog? It's now possible via feedburner. Open my blog http://orionxt12.blogspot.be/ and enter your email adress into the box "subscribe for email". It's that easy:)

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).

Moon 34% with Apollo 11 & 17

Only -1°C and much warmer then yesterday night :)
The moon is now 3° north-east from Mars and 34% illuminated. Some high clouds are visible but this is good enough to make some pictures. This is also the right moment to observe Mare Tranquillitatis with south and north of it the landings of the first and last Apollo mission.