Grayskies in Perth, Western Australia | Sport & recreation

Grayskies

Locality: Perth, Western Australia

Address: Cockburn Central 6164 Perth, WA, Australia

Website: http://www.grayskies.com.au/

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20.01.2022 Weather permitting, and for those who are keen to wake up early and take a look at the early morning sky. You will indeed find a rare sight to behold. Here in Western Australia, If you head out at the same time of 3:30am on both mornings of April 15, and 16 2020, you will be able to see with the naked eye, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, bunched in a group with the moon as their feature guest. Pluto will also be present near that quartet, however the naked eye cannot see Pluto. Hopefully clear sky both those mornings.

20.01.2022 Friday night, 22/05/2020, wasn’t too bad for photography into the sky. I recently posted a normal pic of this, but last night tempted me to zoom into it as close as I could whilst still seeing it all in one go. Welcome back to our winter skies, the Trifid Nebula. This colourful beauty is located almost directly in front of our galaxies central core, which is blocked by a very thick cloud of starry dust. The Trifid, or officially referred to as NGC 6514, is one of the most colourful nebulas in our sky, and is estimated to be approx 5200 light years away.

16.01.2022 A photo of Neptune taken recently. I didn’t know what to expect when trying to find it. If I found it at all. Low and behold, there she was, the second furtherest planet away from Earth. I was quite excited to see it, even though it was quite small to see. The telescope actually picked up its natural colour quite well.

13.01.2022 This is my first crack at Mars from last night, or more accurately, early this morning at 2:30am. I was waiting all night for it to rise high enough in the sky to enable a reasonable photo. I usually try and target objects when they are at least 45 degrees or more above the horizon. That way there is less atmospheric distortion, and the colours become more true to what they actually should be. This lovely Planet will be at opposition in October this year. That means it will b...e right along side earth, the closet to us during its orbit around the sun. Mars takes 2 Earth years to do a full lap around the sun. So a year on Mars is equivalent to 2 years here. In October, Mars should be full circle, and about 20 percent bigger in diameter than it is now. Hopefully October weather will be kind. You can see Mars now though, clearly with the naked eye, as what appears to be a bright orange star. Be prepared to get up early though.

11.01.2022 First crack at Jupiter for the year. Hopefully the next two weeks will bring a couple of clear nights, because this king of the planets is the closest it will be to Earth during these next two weeks.

11.01.2022 It was an early rise this morning to catch this one just before the sun came up. Let me introduce you to comet 2020-F8-Swan. The horrid cloudy skies lately had me worried that I may not get an opportunity to photograph this, and this morning was the day. Considering that this week is forecast clouds again all week, I doubt we will get another chance to capture it because it is getting too close to the sun and the sky will be too light as the morning sun rises.

10.01.2022 Somewhere in the galaxy far, far, away from everything else, is a planet named Earth. The year is 2020, and so far this year the inhabitants of that poor unfortunate planet have suffered greatly. Not only have they experienced a lot of BS from various governments, they are currently experiencing one of the worst lockdowns from society that their kind has seen for over 70 years. And to top it off - OMG - those living there who indulge themselves in the joy of astrophotography,... are finding it a real challenge as they isolate themselves thinking, anticipating, and hoping for clear nights, only to wonder why the sky also is isolating them from their photographic equipment too. But wait..... there has been the occasional clearing between the clouds, and the opportunity for at least one enthusiastic, wishful, human, became available. Even if only for 12 minutes. His gear was setup. He was hopeful. Then it happened. The clouds parted ways for just that short period of time, yes.. 12 minutes was his window of opportunity, until alas, the clouds united once again to remind the Astro human that his turn was over for the month. (I darn hope not) Anyway, as a result of that 12 minutes, I was able to capture at least this much of the Centaurus - A. A tad noisy, but for 12 minutes I expected that. Centaurus -A is located about 11 million light years away. A very close neighbour to the Southern Pinwheel - M83.

09.01.2022 Comet 2020swan is leaving us now, but the annuals never do. This Trifid Nebula is a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers. I have posted this one roughly same time last year. This time though, it was captured using my small 130mm diameter scope. Also known as - M 20 - it is easily spotted in binoculars as an ellipse of haze. It is estimated to reside about 5,200 light years away. The Trifid's exact distance is rather uncertain, with estimates ranging from 2,200 to 9,000 ...light years. At the value of 5,200 light years adopted here, the Trifid spans a diameter about 10 light years across. M 20 was discovered by Le Gentil before 1750. Charles Messier added it as the 20th entry in his catalog in June, 1764. Incidentally, for those interested in sci-fi movies, Images of the Trifid Nebula appear on the set of the star ship Enterprise in many episodes of the Star Trek television series. See more

08.01.2022 Tomorrow morning - 9th May 2020, just may be the last opportunity to catch a look at Comet 2020 swan. Earlier this week I posted an image which I captured from my backyard in South Lake. Since then the weather has been so cruel preventing another look at this. Tomorrow morning, weather permitting could be our last chance. It may be too low in the sky from where you are, yet it would be well worth the effort if you could go somewhere to gain a high advantage view. It will this... time be bright enough to see using binoculars. From 4:00am to 6:00am will Be the time. At 4 it will likely be too low for most to see. After 6 the sky will be too pink because of the rising sun. Below I have provided an angle graph to make it easier to find. Just point the arrows due east. With the horizontal arrow level to ground. The angle arrow should virtually be smack on. Clear skies permitting, good luck. See more

06.01.2022 A recent pic of Jupiter acquired on 20th July 2020. Timed it great to grab the great red spot. The sky wasn’t very nice which made this a tad blurry due to high cloud in the atmosphere. The biggest frustration with this hobby. You can’t see the mist with the naked eye, but it sure shows when you zoom into space objects.

06.01.2022 This photo of the Sombrero Galaxy is an extension of the same object I posted in February. When I say extension, it means that I have accumulated more light from it through a longer exposure time. The previous post of this one was 25 minutes. This one was 35 minutes exposure. This galaxy resides in the constellation of Virgo, and is estimated to be 29.3 million light years away, having a potential of 130,000 light years in diameter. Bear in mind that 1 light year is the distance it takes light to travel in one whole year, or 365 days. The speed of light is 296,000km per second, or, 10,656,000,000,000km per hour. so if we multiply that large number by 8,760 hours in a year, then multiply that result by 29 million, and you have the estimated distance in kms that this galaxy is from us.

06.01.2022 And this is just the beginning.... I know that I created this FB Page to share pics of astronomy stuff, but as mentioned in earlier posts, history has shown many times that celestial bodies communicate with us in mysterious ways. For those who have been following, I have shared phenomena with regard to our planets this year 2020, and have hinted to watch for things here on earth as a synchronous pattern with the above. Political, religious, and cultural. Ie our way of life ...being controlled, coerced, manipulated etc, etc. I invite you to have a look at the link provided below. Read it thoroughly, and appreciate the full implications of this. We are expected to trust those we don’t even know. I don’t mind at all if you believe me to be paranoid, or way off beat. Everyone has a right to express and believe what they want. Assess this as you wish, but there is much more to come, wait and see. https://www.vox.com//apple-google-contact-tracing-app-coro

04.01.2022 For the passionate planeteers, and stargazers. A bit of info in preparation for the evenings of 12th, 13th, and 14th of October 2020. Our red neighbour planet, Mars, will be at 100% illumination. In other words Full phase - full circular ball - like a full moon. It will be an apparent luminosity of -2.6. (Jupiter right now is -2.7 so ie, very bright), and 22.4 arc seconds large. What that means is, That is will be half the physical visual size of what we are seeing Jupiter r...ight now in our eveni g sky. It is the closest that Mars will be to earth during its 2year Solar orbit. And even though it is at opposition to Earth every two years, (that means the closest it gets to earth on the same side of the sun), it will not get this close again for many years to come. If you don’t want to stay up all night, and want to catch this phenomenon at a reasonable hour, at around 10:30pm on the above mentioned evenings, you will easily see mars about 45 degrees up from the horizon toward the NE direction. It will be a very bright, orange to red light in the sky.

01.01.2022 These two shots of Mars taken two weeks apart from each other. The top one was captured early morning of 13th September 2020. The bottom one was captured 1:30am 27th Sept 2020. Each photo is an image of opposing sides of the planet. Mars rotates one full revolution in about 24 hours and 40 minutes.