Crescent Jupiter

You know that when you see Jupiter as a crescent, the view isn't from Earth.  From here, Jupiter will always look full, or maybe about 99% full or somewhere around there. 
So if you are sitting 16 AU (93 million miles x 16) looking back at Jupiter, it will be a crescent.  Here is a different view of Jupiter taken from the New Horizon's spacecraft which is a little more than 1/2 way to Pluto (yes, a planet if you ask me!).  Again, thanks to Emily at Planetary Society for posting this cool shot!

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Some more of those distant photos that words aren't needed.

The European Rosetta spacecraft passed about 2,000 miles from the Lutetia asteroid last week.  I'm a little late at posting this, but the photos are still just as cool.
The Saturn photo is just way high up on the coolness scale.
 

...and looking back on the way out.

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Clear!

Got a clear night without a moon last Friday night for a change.   Quite a change from our 4th of July holiday weekend a week ago.  It was one of those rare nights when the Clear Sky chart is dark all the way across the night part.  
I had a chance to try a couple of objects in the Sagittarius area of the south skies.  The neighbor hedges and tree had been shortened, so I have a little more time there before objects sneak behind bushes.
 Tried using ISO 1600 this time, usually I'm at ISO 800 since I always figured I would get too much grainy stuff, but stacking seems to deal with that fine.

M20 at 3 minutes x 8 exposures: 

 M16 Eagle nebula 5 exposures at 4 minutes each:

 (Click the images to see a larger version of them)

| Highlands Astro-shack Observatory images |

Happy 4th of July

Cloudy again as usual here in Seattle, but that's normal for this holiday. Summer here usually never starts until July 5th, and that is holding very true this year with our lousy June weather. 
For the holiday, here is a picture of NGC6946 - "The fireworks galaxy".  This is a photo I took a while back when we actually had clear skies... probably after the 5th of July.

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