Slightly more advanced solar photography from August 23, this time with a tripod and stacked from 10 exposures. I’ve still been using those old 1999 solar glasses taped to the lens of my Canon Powershot SX30, but this result with several visible sunspots is surprisingly good.

And now for something slightly different: my first attempt at sun photography from noon today: I found a pair of unused old solar glasses from the 1999 eclipse and taped them to the lens of my Canon Powershot SX30! Don’t worry, the cardboard actually covered the whole lens and the 35x zoom went over the full the solar foil area, so there was no danger of melting the camera. To my surprise, I was even able to resolve the one measely sunspot we have right now! When the US eclipse is over and the prices for solar filters go down again, I’m definitively getting one for the SX30 to make more sun shots.

Here’s the full Moon from August 7, before the weather went all naughty!

Yesterday’s Moon, just because I was able to actually see it for a change!

Another early evening blue sky Moon, this time from June 5!

Another ISS long exposure capture, this is from two nights ago. The brightness on the bottom of the frame is a combination of some clouds and my balcony lighting which I neglected to turn off, but it made for a nice effect with the station fading into it. This was again a two and a half minute exposure.

Yesterday was another starry night perfect for catching the ISS, but by the time it came along for the second pass – on the first one it was still too bright to take a photo – a few clouds were beginning to appear. This time I took a longer exposure to let the ISS trail through the whole frame.

Yesterday evening was the first time since 2015 that I’ve been able to catch the International Space Station on camera flying over my location. It was one of the brightest passes I’ve seen for a long time and there might be more in the next couple of days – but this photo is actually pretty good already. I used the Canon Powershot SX30 with CHDK to make a single two-minute exposure and I’m astonished how good it looks! I will try it with the Sony Alpha 65 too sometime, but I haven’t yet got a remote for it that would allow longer exposures than 30 seconds, which is vital for this kind of photo.

Here’s the full Moon from May 10th – this is a bit enhanced with more contast to bring out the details better. As usual, this was taken only with a Canon Powershot SX30 at full zoom and stacked from about 20 single shots with Registax and slightly edited with Paint Shop.

A daylight Moon from May 5th.