November 14 2016 Supermoon taken in Cathedral City, CA

I hope you all enjoyed the Supermoon, here's a hi-res image I took of the Supermoon in Cathedral City! This is a 25 panel mosaic stitched together to create the final image. I will say that I didn't notice much of a difference in the overall apparent size of the full Moon, but it was a heck of a lot brighter than normal.

Moon Mosaic: Coachella Valley Astrophotography 7-17-16

This is not your typical Moon picture, but a mosaic of 11 pictures of the Moon stitched together to create a very large and detailed image. 

This was actually created using 11 short video clips: I pointed at one part of the Moon, took a short video at 64 frames per second, and then used stacking software which picked the best of those frames and added them together to produce a single image. I then moved the telescope to a different part of the Moon and repeated the procedure 11 times, until I had images of the entire surface of the Moon. These were then processed to sharpen the details, and finally stitched together to create the mosaic. 

Taken 7-17-16 in Cathedral City, CA

Nexstar 6se + 6.3 focal reducer

asi120mc-s camera

64fps 3000 frames per video

11 videos total

Dimensions 3300x3100

Full image here: http://i.imgur.com/b2o5aUL.jpg

January List of Events in the Coachella Valley

The first month of 2016 will be an exciting start to a new year for astronomy enthusiasts. There is going to be plenty of celestial events, and interesting observations so keep your eyes on the night sky.

Unfortunately, El Nino is coming our way, and that means clouds and rain. Now this may sound great for obvious reasons, such as the drought, but it does not bode well for astronomy and astrophotography. Clouds make it generally very poor for stargazing.

First we have the annual Quadrantids Meteor Shower on January 3-4. You can catch the meteors starting after sundown on Sunday night, and watch them throughout the evening and into Monday morning. The best time for viewing is the actual peak, which starts at 3am and ends at the first light of the day. This particular meteor shower is above average, and NASA is estimating around 80 meteors per hour in areas with dark skies and little to no light pollution.

January 2-6 Spot the space station! Early morning hours seem to be the sweet spot for viewing the ISS in the Coachella Valley. Head on over to Spot the Station via NASA here to see dates/times and other information related to local sightings.

January 9th @ 7:00pm Star Party hosted by the Sun City Palm Desert Astronomy Club, located at the east greenbelt off Donny Circle, just south of Alliance Way in Palm Desert. More info here.

January 10th we have the New Moon, which is a great time to view the galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, and other types of deep sky objects. Without the interference of the Moons glow, faint objects in the sky can be more clearly seen.

January 16th 5pm-8pm Star Party hosted by the ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE DESERT, located at the visitors center. Directions and information can be found here.

January 24th is this months Full Moon,

January 27th @ 7:00pm is the monthly general meeting of the Sun City Palm Desert Astronomy Club. Located in the Tahoe Room at the Lakeview Clubhouse. This month, they will be talking about "Hubble and the Sagittarius Star Cloud". More info here.