Different New Horizons Pluto Closest Flyby Countdown Timer Ending

With the help of my son, we were able to use 1 laptop and 2 mobile phones to get the zero shot clock time of closest flyby of New Horizons to Pluto! Congratulations to Alan Stern and the New Horizons Team! Below are the screen grabs from my laptop, Samsung Note 4 and S4 respectively.

Below is a photo of Pluto taken by New Horizons at 16 hours and 766,000 kilometres from the surface. Latest flyby images unfortunately will take four hours to reach Earth as it is 5 billion kilometres away.

Solar Imaging Session - July 12, 2015

The sky this morning is partly cloudy but I got some cloud openings for me to make a quickie Ha solar imaging session before lunchtime. AR2382 Sunspot Group is large but very quiet as well as the rest of the smaller sunspot groups. AR2384 Sunspot Group shows some solar activity in its core as well as a nice large dark filament trailing the group.

Sun Halo - July 3, 2015

As I was going home, I saw a beautiful Sun Halo almost overhead so I grab my Canon EOS 500D DSLR with Canon EFS 10-22mm f/3.5-5.6 set at 10mm f/11 to image it. But Sun Halo also means we will have a bad weather later or tomorrow :(

Venus Jupiter Conjunction - July 2, 2015

I tried to image the Venus and Jupiter conjunction again this early evening with my Samsung Note 4 camera and indeed the 2 planets are starting to separate its distance from each other with the closest being that last July 1.

CCD Narrow Band Practice Processing Session

With impending bad weather and rainy season starting, I missed doing DSO imaging very much and so I try to hone my image processing skills by constantly trying to play around with different techniques using old and public data pool images. For this session, I try to play around processing narrow band images of IC410 Tadpole Nebula taken by Irving TCPIP and M8 Lagoon Nebula taken by Aresteo of Astrobin who graciously provided their narrow band image data for others like me to practice. These images are not my property and I just use them for my image processing practice and here are the 2 images that I will share with their data. Not the best processing IMHO but at least I have something to start out with :) I do hope someday I will get a chance to acquire OIII and SII filters so that I can get the data from my own acquisition :)

Solar Imaging Session - July 2, 2015

I was able to take a quick snap on the Sun in Ha wavelength before it gets obstructed by our roof. A very nice wide dark filament highlights the solar surface together with growing AR2373 , 2376 and 2375 Sunspot Groups in the NE quadrant.

Venus Jupiter Conjunction - July 1, 2015

As I was walking home, I passed by a big mall and saw a nice background shot to image the still close Venus and Jupiter Conjunction. So I once again use my trusty Samsung Note 4 camera to image the pair. The 2 planets will start to separate farther to each other starting tomorrow. Thanks Venus and Jupiter for the nice show the last 3 days!