Planet Scenes October 2024

	October 30:  Sun Activity The Sun is quite active at the moment, showing a large number of small and medium-sized sunspots across its surface.  This was a stack of 4 images taken on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 30.  The telescope was a 1970's vintage orange Celestron C-90, which has 1,000 mm focal length.
		October 29:  Jupiter and Mars, also Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Amid drifting clouds, Jupiter and Mars adorn the winter constellations early in the morning of October 29th.  At this point, we are probably only a few hours away from the point at which Mars would make an exactly straight line with Castor and Pollux in Gemini, although as we learned the other morning, Mars is now just over the border in Cancer.  The great comet of 2024 has faded considerably but is still a great imaging target with a telephoto lens, this evening passing by the sprawling open cluster IC 4665.
	October 27:  Mars in Gemini Mars continues to move eastward along the ecliptic and is now approaching Cancer and the point at which it will appear to be in alignment with Castor and Pollux.
		October 24:  Venus & Saturn On a warm and clear late October evening, with no Moon, we were treated to a serene view of Venus low on the horizon and Saturn, joined by Neptune, high in the southeast.
			October 20:  Sun with Sunspots I wanted to try stacking Sun images today but could only get it to work after three tries; the first two are individual images and the third is a stack of six.  Not too many sunspots today, and certainly no large ones.  Three colors to choose from!
		October 17:  Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Even though a full Moon brightened the sky, the comet was still easily seen in binoculars and the camera, floating through the southwestern part of the Caput half of Serpens.  The second image is a stack of 14 three second exposures.  If you look really hard, you can see a hint of the anti-tail.
			October 16:  Comet Animation and Stills After several days of clouds, I was finally able to see and image the comet again, this time from near my home in central Virginia.  This animation was made with images using a 75 mm lens in bright moonlight just after the end of astronomical twilight.  The wide-angle view shows the sky from Venus in the lower left to β Serpentis at upper right.
				October 12:  Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS I finally got a clear view of C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS on the evening of October 12 from Lake George, NY while visiting my lady friend Laura.  She was good enough to accompany me around the lake from her home on the west side to Pilot Knob Beach on the eastern shore, which afforded a view due west.
		October 10:  Aurora Borealis in Virginia Heightened solar activity resulted in the aurora borealis being visible from across much of the country on this Thursday evening, and although I could not see it or image it from my house, my friend Megan was able to see it and get pictures of it while driving around the county with her husband LOL.
	October 6:  Mars in Gemini Mars has been racing across the constellation Gemini since early September and here we see him about half-way through.  Later in the month there will be several alignments as described in the October issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.  This view was taken with my old Nikon D40, which is a cropped sensor camera, so the 55mm lens I used actually results in a view as though it were taken with a 83mm lens with a full-frame DSLR.
	October 5:  Corona Borealis The much anticipated eruption of T Coronae Borealis hasn't happened yet, and with our luck it will occur at the least opportune time.  Here we see that the Blaze Star is still quiescent.
		October 5:  Venus & Moon Several days after the annular eclipse, the crescent Moon joined Venus in the evening sky for a nice selfie.  Zubenelgenubi photobombed them!
			October 4:  Attempt for Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS at Dawn Bizarrely bad weather that lingered over Virginia and the central east coast for two straight weeks put any hope of seeing the Comet in the dawn sky completely out of the range of possibility, but in early October the weather finally broke, so I attempted to get a picture of the comet by driving to the Outer Banks on the first day it was forecast to be clear somewhere close to Virginia.  I didn't see or image the comet LOL.

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