The Clear Night Sky

Hard to find sometimes, but lovely when it shows up . . .

Too many cloudy nights, with snow, and then rain, then snow again. Or just cloudy. But over the past few days, we have had some better weather and a few clear nights. Here are a few photos from camera, iPhone, telescope and drone to celebrate the occasion.

The Moon

I love the simplicity of this shot, with a focus on the crescent moon and the lake.

The non-crescent portion of the moon is lit up by earthshine. Photo taken with Nikon Z8, Nikkor 24-120 mm zoom lens at 120 mm, f/4, ISO 1600, with exposure of a bit under one second (1/1.3s).

If you explore the photo you will see that several stars are also visible: Nunki and Ascella in the Sagittarius constellation to the right side of moon, above and below the moon respectively.

The moon is right on top of a third star, Tau Sagettarii. These three stars and Phi Sagettarii, visible further above and to the right of Nunki in the picture below, form the handle of the teapot in Sagittarius.

The Moon Again - with telescope and night sky

This was a 3-second handheld shot with the iPhone to capture the stars. I took the photo in the morning at the end of the astrophotography session with the telescope. What the telescope saw is next . . .

Horsehead and Flame Nebula in Orion

I had a lot of trouble with this picture . . . Although I set the equipment up to take the usual stack of 5 minute duration images, I had to discard a lot of them due to satellites crossing the frame. More than half the images picked up at least one satellite. Fortunately, there were enough good frames left to capture the detail of the nebulosity in the Flame Nebula and clearly show the horse’s head in the aptly named Horsehead Nebula.

Pinwheel Galaxy near the Big Dipper

This went a lot better - sky was dark and clear and only a few frames had to be discarded. I love the spiral shape and what the universe has to offer us out there.

Very far away too - about 21 million light-years. How far away is that? Hmm . . . I will leave the math to you. For reference, a light-year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres.

The Moon Again - Eclipsed by the Earth and the Clouds

About a week and a half earlier, the moon was scheduled for a lunar eclipse. The weather was iffy but I thought I would get out to take some pictures if possible. I was all ready to take pictures of the red moon as it was setting but in the end decided to send up the drone to take this picture as the clouds rolled in. There it is - the moon - dead centre of the sky portion of the photo. Unfortunately, just a reddish smudge as the eclipse of moon started to take hold behind the clouds.

To see what we missed regarding the lunar eclipse, let’s head back to the 2025 files. Here is a composite of a previous lunar eclipse.

Total Eclipse of the Moon - March 2025

You can read more about that lunar eclipse below:

That’s it for this post and the short collection of pictures. Let me know what you think. Hopefully the weather will grace us with more clear nights ahead.

Until next time,

Andy