The North Star! They really revolve around it!

Round and round they go!!!

So my friends, I put on some warm clothes and headed out to look at the stars. The moment I open the door, it started to hail, I could not believe it! 2 secondes earlier I looked out through the window and saw full of stars...

Click on the Astrophoto to enlarge

I thought my evening was ruined and came back inside. 30 minutes later, a looked out through the window and the stars where shining, so once again I dressed up and headed out. The night sky was beautiful!
Because of the hail, I did not want to take out my telscope, so I took only my camera and the camera mount.

This time I wanted to take a star trail picture with the North star in the middle, so I did. I had a good 30 minutes before the clouds came back and I manage to take this cool picture.

Enjoy and remember to go out and look at the night sky!

Tapani Isomäki
Kustavi, Finland
Astrophoto: Pentax 31mm / ISO 1600 / Exposure: 24x30 sec. / camera mount / Registax

Carl Sagan Day!

Happy birthday Carl!
76th anniversary of Carl Sagan birth (November 9, 1934)

Carl Sagan would have love the new technologies we have today for night sky observation.
He would have been amazed!

Wish you go and look at his very popular show, Cosmos and we wish you happy birthday Carl!
Thanks for everything, we sure miss you!


Go on youtube and look for other episodes of Cosmos.




Carl Sagan was a Professor of Astronomy and Space Science and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. He served as an advisor and consultant to NASA, and played a major role in the establishment of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). He was a Pulitzer Prize winning author and most familiar to the public through his COSMOS series on PBS. In addition to numerous awards, recognitions and honorary degrees for his outstanding contributions, he is acknowledged as one of the most effective public faces of astronomy and space science throughout the world. Sagan died in December 1996. 


Tapani Isomäki
Kustavi, Finland

The greatest night EVER!

 I looked outside just to see if I could take a photo or two of the night sky, but NOTHING!   WAIT!!!!

This was at 10 O'clock PM, lots of clouds and only Jupiter peeps out with a fuzzy light.
Around 2 O'clock in the morning, I look again and the sky is as clear as it could be, I saw everything, I mean everything!
So, afraid that the clouds will return, I hustle down with my mount, take the scope and install it, take the power cord and install it, take out the table and the chair for my accessories and the chair for better observation ;)
After 20 minutes of fussing and looking very professional, the scope was good to go!
After Polar alignement of course... 
Now to see if it works.
Indeed it works and the mount motor is silent as a the nature that surrounds me.

It is fantastic!!!
Now if I could grasp the DSLR camera and the focusing, it would give me better results and nice Astrophotos to show you

PS: This is a star trail of the constellation Orion. In the middle of the picture you can see M42 (Orion nebula) trailing away. The 3 stars with a distance between them is the belt of Orion the hunter.

Astrophoto: Camera Mount / Pentax f/8 35mm 901s ISO1600 /

Next time!

Tapani Isomäki
Kustavi, Finland

Sensationalism in science!!!

Big chunks of rock discovered revolving around Sun

Amazing!

Big chunks of rock cleared from their orbit revolving around Sun like Star.

In constellation Lyra, Star class M Kustar VI2010 harbors big chunks of rock.
We presume them to be proto-exoplanets in the making.
The proto-exoplanets are peculiar because of their orbit cleared around them, they should not be clumpy chunks of rock but instead smoother spherical shapes.

Wow! I love sensationalism, I always wanted to print "real news" from "another world".
Thank you to everybody involved

Go check out new photos in Astrophotography HERE!

Tapani Isomäki
Kustavi, Finland