Abbascope: an eclipse through Agnetha's eyes!

 

Yesterday there was a rather spectacular total eclipse of the sun. At least, in a remote corner of Western Australia there was. Here it was a smallish partial eclipse, but still worth observing and celebrating.

A thing with eclipses is that you're tempted tolook directly at the sun, and this can be very bad for you. If a telescope's involved, it can be worse.

I was reminded of this when one of my smaller toy telescopes nearly caught fire while I was practicing image projection techniques with it. That's when I came up with the idea of the telescope-free Abbascope. 

 

 

By drilling holes through cardboard Agnetha's eyes, I was able to turn her into a rather classy pinhole camera, and safely view the projected solar images on a screen behind her.

Ramadan moon

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venus too, taken the other night in Maroochydore.

Heavenly conjunction

 

 

 

Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets, close together in the evening sky today, along with a bunch of bats heading out for their night's adventures. The planetary alignment was best a couple of nights ago, but we had overcast skies then.

The Green Comet

Here it is, Comet C/2022 E3ZTF, the 'Green Comet', as viewed tonight from the Sunshine Coast. It's not actually very green. Except in a long-exposure photo through a powerful telescope. But through binoculars, or in a photo taken with a mobile phone, like this one, it's a very faint fuzzy patch. Like a lot of comets in fact. That's just how it is, sorry!

Eclipse!

 

Total lunar eclipse the other night. There were enough gaps in the cloud cover to get some good views of the lead up to totality and the so-called 'blood moon'.