Other interesting pictures from last night

I thought you might find this picture interesting - it was taken at about 1920 GMT from the old Penn House carpark, with the trees along the railwayline in the foreground. If you look carefully you will see that the crescent Moon clearly shows the "dark part" in a pale grey light. This is called ashen light, and it is caused by light reflecting from the Earth, in this case the afternoon sunshine bouncing up off the Atlantic ocean. Ashen light is visible fairly often, and sometimes seems to have different colours. Some observers suggest that the place where the light is bouncing up from has an effect - orange ashen light when the Sahara is the light cource, and green light when forested areas are involved. Someone living on the Moon would experience ashen light the same way that we appreciate a moonlit landscape here on Earth.

In this long-exposure shot, you can see a pale trail disappearing into the side of Constantine House. This is the International Space Station, which made a wonderful display as it passed between Venus and Jupiter just before 1930 GMT. You get the trail as the object moves while the camera shutter is open. You can get predictions for ISS flyovers from the Heavens Above website - there are usually a few every day, so have a look out for the best (brightest) ones.

Finally, trying out Bootham's excellent Nikon D700  teamed up with a 300mm zoom lens, I was able to snap this neat little shot of the Pleiades. I am so excited by the possibilities of this camera that I will be ordering some DSLR astrophotography guides for the obervatory this week. I hope that we will be able to get members of the school observatory experimenting with their own pictures soon.

The stars are elongated into short lines because the Earth had time to rotate slightly during the exposure, dragging the stars westwards across the sky.