*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

NickK said:
Been given the all clear to put a permanent pier in the back garden of our new place!

No more setting up!
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Lucky sod. Why don't you go all the way and get an observatory?

I dont get out as much as I would like due to the 1 hour setup time, its a right pain the arse.
 
Geminid Meteor Shower Time - December 14th and 15th after midnight

The early mornings of December 14th and 15th will give us the chance, if clear, of observing the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. Sadly, this year,the Full Moon is on the 10th and it will lie close to the radiant this night. This means that you will only see the brighter trails by looking high up away from the glare of the Moon. An observing location well away from towns or cities will also pay dividends though. The relatively slow moving meteors arise from debris released from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. This is unusual, as most meteor showers come from comets. The radiant - where the meteors appear to come from - is close to the bright star Castor in the constellation Gemini as shown on the chart. If it is clear it will be cold - so wrap up well, wear a woolly hat and have some hot drinks with you.
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Hmm from the back garden of the new place. A very quick attempt of 15 x 1 second exposures:

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If the polar alignment was better I could have much less noise from longer exposures :(
 
I work in CGI for a living so thought I would put my 'skills' to good use. This was done by projecting a photo of Saturn I took earlier this year onto geometry in Maya with a stereo camera setup:

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You don't need glasses for this trick to work. All you have to do is cross your eyes until the two images meet in the middle, then try and focus on this new third image (but make sure to relax your eyes while doing this). It may take a little bit of practice but once you've got it, it's easy :)
 
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Station Commander Captures Unprecedented View of Comet

International Space Station Commander Dan Burbank captured spectacular imagery of Comet Lovejoy from about 240 miles above the Earth’s horizon on Wednesday, Dec. 21. Burbank described seeing the comet two nights ago as "the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space," in an interview with WDIV-TV in Detroit. Last night he captured hundreds of still images of the comet.

A selection of images is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/gallery/index.html.

Image Credit: NASA
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simulatorman said:
The "Apollo Zone", a new view of the moon from the NASA Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal, LMMP:

http://pub.lmmp.nasa.gov/LMMPUI/LMMP_CLIENT/LMMP.html

More on how this was done:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/apollo-zone-map.html
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Great link! I tried my own lunar mosaic a couple nights ago, I think I need to try it again on a night which isn't blowing a gale! I had to literally cling onto my mount so it didn't fly off into the sky:

(warning, it's a big image)
http://www.samiransari.co.uk/images/Other_images/moon_stitch_fullsize.jpg
 
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