A650IS arrives with Rain and Clouds!!!

Finally was able to get my new camera, the Canon Powershot A650IS. But as expected. It rained when I got my hand on the camera before the store closes! Getting new toys will certainly give the owner cloudy skies int he days to come :) LOL

Although the rain stopped after I got home. cloudy skies persisted whole evening as shown in this pic which I took using the new camera. Anyway, I will play around with it in the days to come to familiarize myself on it before I put it into astro-solar imaging in the weekend with the PST. That is if the weather will be ok :) LOL

Tonight's close conjunction of Moon, Saturn and Regulus was a sight to behold! The magnificent trio form a triangle that is a good photo-opps for astro-imagers like me :) Image was taken using Canon 300D DSLR with EF-S 18mm-55mm f/3.5~5.6 zoom lens set at 55mm (85mm equivalent in 35mm format) at f/5.6 .

Nice Conjunction

After reading from www.spaceweather.com that there will be a nice conjunction of the crescent Moon together with planet Saturn and bright star Regulus o June 8 (June 9 Phil Time), I got to get a chance in early evening to image them one day in advance so that I can compare their positions in the sky. I have attached an image I taken this evening which shows the Moon below Saturn and Regulus and planet Mars below the overexposed Moon. Image taken using Canon 300D with EF-S 18mm-55mm lens set at 55mm (85mm in 35mm format) at f/5.6 .

Tomorrow will be a nice photo opportunity for astro-imagers to get a nice shot of the close conjunction so I'm looking forward to imaging it probably with ym new 650IS digicam as it wil arive tomorrow for my pickup :) Hope it wont cloud me out with it :) LOL

The Long Wait .......................

Oh Boy! Just waiting for my new toy, the Canon A650IS to arrive soon. I have placed an order of the unit since May 15th but my source told me it will be arriving mid June 2008 :( At first I didnt feel any urgency to get hold of it as the weather lately is not good. I plan to use the A650IS in doing solar work as well as double stars imaging.

But as of this week..... I was dead wrong as the supposed short wait seems an eternity and I can already feel the itch to finally test it out....... I just told myself ......" Just 2 more weeks, hold on....." :) LOL Me getting the A650IS doesnt mean I will be retiring my old Canon 300D which has been helpful to my needs in doing DSLR astrophotography. The A650IS will just complement it on some application only.....

I had started already doing my personalized astro webpage for the past 3 days and hopefully it will come out by mid June so that I can use it to share with my fellow astronomy lovers.

Solar Imaging Session - June 1, 2008

The sky today was a bit clear, so I got a chance to observe the Sun after a long spell. As I set up my PST-Ha, I was able to see 2 prominences. One is small while the other is a medium size eruptive prominence that was fairly visible. I was able to image it using an ATK-1HS II webcam and the image can be seen below: