thebaldgeek

One of the cool things about being back home is the stars.
It has been freezing, but as a result, the stars are so steady you have to really look hard to see if they twinkle at all.
(Its one of my pet peeves that the poets did everyone such a disservice by saying how wonderful it is when the stars are twinkling….. That’s the worst! It means that the atmosphere is really turbulent and that the path the starlight is taking from space to our eye is wobbling all over the place…. If you look up and the stars are twinkling, go back inside and find something else to do).

Hope to break out the mates telescope tomorrow night (or tonight if we can tear ourselves away from his amazing home theater system).

In the mean time, here is a real quick and dirty photo I took while driving from Bright to Uranquinty.
Just a simple stop on the side of the road. Quick 30 second photo. Nothing fancy on the post processing. Bump on the temperature to bring it back to what it really looked liked (inky black).

Yes, they really are this amazing.
If you find yourself Downunder, look up.

So, my sister thinks that watching my back yard for 11 hours is like watching paint dry…….

I did not do this one, but check it out.
Amazing stuff and a nice reminder of why I love the southern hemisphere stars……

(Also its about as far from my backyard as you could get!).

We are in for a bit of treat this year. Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly.

There are two comets, one nowish, one latter this year.

Check out the light and fluffy article to get started;

http://mashable.com/2013/01/25/comets-headed-towards-earth/

They are always a bit hit and miss to predict their brightness, so lets not get our hopes up too much, but, if it goes off like they hope, it could be quite a show…..

Dad and I first saw the Andromeda galaxy from the roof of our house in The Gap. (Hint, its a suburb of Brisbane).
We extended the house by building a living room out the back of the house, the roof was flat (by design) and we built an access ladder.
I often hauled a bean bag up there and just sat to look at the stars. One of my best memories of that house is the time when the government was having an industrial dispute with the electrical trade union. The union, in its usual bully way, said that if they did not get paid more, they would shut the power off. The government said fine.
So they did.
The newspapers printed up a time table of what suburbs would be blacked out and for how long. When ever The Gap was going to be blacked out, I made sure I was on the roof.
Epic stars for a week or so was the result I was most excited about.

But I digress, It took us a while, but we tracked it down and saw the big fuzzy blob through our department store telescope.
It was one of those moments.

Each year (or there abouts) when Andromeda is visible from Australia, we tried to check it out…..
Its that time of year.

As such, Dad asked me to post a photo of what it looks like for me…..

So, Dad, here is your photo.

This is using my Canon with a 300mm lens. Its 120 second, f5.6 at 1600ISO. (No tracking).

Here is a shot with my 24mm lens. 60sec f5.0 at 1600ISO;

You can see the blur on the trees from the wind that was happening at the time.

You can just see it with the naked eye if you drive out of Temecula.

So. There you have it.