Solar System

This comet will reach its closest distance from the Sun in just over a month and currently has a magnitude of 5, making it visible to the naked eye from places with dark skies. However, observation is becoming progressively more difficult for those in the Northern Hemisphere. The photo taken on March 14th captures the comet between the Triangulum and Andromeda galaxies and will probably be my last opportunity to observe it due to the increasing brightness of the Moon. Not having a star tracker available in Pisa, I had to adapt: the photo is the result of the average of many short and static exposures. Thanks to this, I was able to partially limit the problems caused by the absence of a tracking system, but you can still see the stars slightly elongated due to the Earth's rotation.

Trying to take advantage of the last days of sunshine, I took a look at the sun.
This is a distant transit of the ISS across the sun (more than 11000 km away) the Christmas day. The seeing conditions were poor and the sun was low on the horizon, however the vision was quite pleasant given the presence of lots of structures on the photosphere of the sun.

Less than a month after the last image, here it is the evolution of the comet that has become famous in the first period of 2023. Comparing this with the previous image it is clear how much it has changed and how much brighter it is. This picture was taken on the morning of the 29th of January between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m. (UTC+1), three days before its closest approach to earth. This shot was taken after the waxing moon set. All the gear was placed on 2 inches of frozen snow and the cold was bitter, but the humidity was low and the transparency was good. The sky wasn't good enough to see the comet with the naked eye, but was clearly visible in binoculars. The dust tail is seen at the top of the image, while the ion tail is diagonal to the bottom. In this image, the ion tail stretches over 4° of the sky (8 times the diameter of the full moon). In this picture you can see a bifurcation of the ion tail.

After two weeks of fog, I managed to get this shot by escaping to the mountains. The waxing gibbous moon left less than one hour before sunrise to attempt this shot. The comet's dust tail is very short just to its left, while the ion tail extends about 1° in this photo. During the exposure time, many Quadrantid meteors gave a show, being their peak on January 4th

This is the last image of the sequence below: it's a group of sunspots taken with the ASI 120MM camera. It's possible too see the structure of the spots with umbra and penumbra and the sun granules that are deformed in the penumbra. The granules are formed by the convective motions of the sun atmosphere and they have an extremely fast dynamic: in five minutes they change completely. The spots form where the magnetic field inhibits the convective motions, consequently cooling the stellar surface in those points.

The group of sunspots called AR3055 present in the southern hemisphere of the sun in mid-July 2022, was my object of filming. It has a spot of discreet size and a multitude of smaller spots. I caught this sunspots on the 12th, the 13th and 14th of July. This is the comparative image of the same group on these three occasions. The different atmospheric and filming conditions make the resolution increase day by day, but this is not the most important thing. On the contrary, the dynamics that this group presented in less than 2 days is particularly interesting. You can also see that the last image the group appears slightly crushed laterally. This is due to both the relative shift of the spots and the fact that the group is moving towards the edge of the sun disc and therefore appears more and more cut-on and consequently more compact sideways.

At the beginning of December, a few hours of clear sky was finally scheduled. Despite the cold I decided to go with some of my friends of "la Normale" to see the comet between 4:30 and 6:00. With the telescope, he showed a wide and widespread coma and a slight visible tail for about twenty arcminutes. The movement with respect to the stars was easily observable (10 '/h) and very exciting. Unfortunately, the comet was invisible to the naked eye, but the sky in the direction of the comet is polluted due to Pisa and Lucca. In the photo, the tail appears about 2 degrees long, as usual the stars are trails due to the fact that the final images is made by adding photo aligned on the position of the comet. Since it moves with respect to the stars, the trails are obtained.

Two planetary shooting tests with the ASI 120 MM. I bought this sensor to use as an autoguider in deep sky shooting, but it's also great for planets. From a setup point of view, this shot suffers from oversampling and a tensioning of the optics that I was unable to resolve in the evening. I must definitely try using a 2X (instead of 3X) barlow and fix the problem. The seeing was good. As a starting point they looks very promising.

This was a lucky shot taken while observing what remained of the Great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that I had lost due to bad weather. At the beginning I took a wrong shot and Saturn escaped me below the horizon. Trying not to let Jupiter escape, I changed the camera settings on the fly and tried some shots. And that's when I realized what was happening: Jupiter was passing through the open area of ​​the tower where the bell is placed! This is a montage of three of the shots with Jupiter taken within seconds of each other. The 4 Galilean satellites are visible (in the shot with Jupiter higher, Callisto 'touch' the tower, it is not easy to see it). The panorama of La Morra was completed with a mosaic of shots through the telescope. I highly recommend opening the image in its entirety as the view is much wider. The second image opens a video in which is visible the almost-raw sequence of the shots taken during the set of Jupiter

With the new camera I tried to take a somewhat serious planetary shot. I used the camera's Live View video recorded by the computer. Some structures are visible on the surface even if the detail is not very high. In particular, we note the Syrtis Major appearing on the planet and the south cap still partially frozen. I made a few mistakes in the shooting-setup, I can't wait to try again

One of the shots I took to try out my new camera. The Waxing Gibbous Moon, phase 77%

The comet's brightness has dropped a lot, but it is now high in the evening sky and therefore easier to observe thanks to the fact that the Moon no longer bothers observation. This shot was taken from a darker sky than the other photos. To the naked eye the tail appeared longer than 5 degrees while in the photo both the tails, the bluish one of ions and the yellowish one of dust, appear longer than 10 degrees. The estimated visual magnitude was the third. In both tails some details are visible, especially in that of ions which appears double near the false nucleus. The reddish ion tail from the last shot is no longer visible. The stars left trails as the comet moves relative to them

By progressively moving away from the sun, the comet can be observed without the light of dawn. In this shot the two tails of the comet are visible: the one of dust, brighter and more curved, and the one of ions, weaker and rectilinear. The composition and the phenomena that generate the two tails are different and for this reason they differ in shape and color. The tail in this shot is visible for about 4 and a half degrees, roughly the same as nine times the angular diameter of the Moon as seen from Earth. The elongated stars show the comet's displacement with respect to them.

Comet Neowise bathed in the light of dawn. I estimated its visual magnitude at 1.5 and its tail length 40' (in other shots by other authors the comet exceeds one and a half degrees on the same date). The tail visible in this photo is made of dust but there is also a much weaker ion tail (not visible in this shot).

Shooting of the Moon surface Stack of frames from video.

Venus now about 10 degrees from the sun lit only 2%, low on the horizon. Atmospheric refraction was the master of this shot

Mercury, near its maximum West elongation.

This evening (2019-08-02) Luca Parmitano and the whole crew of the ISS have flown above us at almost 28,000 km/h with a very bright transit for most of the italian peninsula. Here, from my house, in the instant of culmination the magnitude of the ISS was estimated at -4.2, So, I tried to shoot this transit. The problem in trying to shoot at the ISS is to chase an object that moves fast in the sky with a mount that has not been designed to do it. It is necessary to chase the ISS by moving the telescope (4 meters of focal) freehand trying to catch the space station inside the camera sensor. This time, fortunately, on 8500 registered frames, the ISS was visible in about 400. To make a dimension comparison the ISS respect to the ground is about a football field in Venice photographed from Turin.

Even if it is difficult to see during a partial eclipse, the side of the moon in shadow is not dark but it's tint with red as in the total eclipses. A longer exposure can highlight this color

When the enlightened side of the moon meets the shadow of the earth ...

Finally the mystery of the Asteroid Gault seems to evolve towards a solution: the new theories explain the emission of material with the high rotational speed of the asteroid that produces a disintegration of the subject. So, this material is pushed away from the asteroid by the action of the solar wind. The second tail is weak and is visible in the image as a slight stain under the asteroid. The primary tail seems to be slightly larger.

An asteroid with two tails?!Two tails are too many to be easily explained by an impact. Despite no new news has been published about what may have happened to this "small" asteroid, the impact theory with a body of smaller size now seems to falter. The photo was carried out in poor seeing conditions.

When the moon become red during an eclipse its brightness drops and it becomes possible to see many stars in its surroundings

An asteroid with a tail?!Due to an impact with a modest object that took place last October / November, some fragments of the asteroid (6478)Gault formed a tail of almost 4 arcmin length, as seen from Earth. The observation was hard due to the suburban sky and the small aperture of my telescope, but the excellent transparency of the night helped a lot.

The Christmas comet of 2018. The first comet that I was able to see to the naked eye. Images taken from a good sky in "Alta Langa"

Medium-field image with the red Moon and Mars

Close-up of the eclipsed moon

The astonishing moonset behind the town of La Morra. The town in the frame is located just under 3km from the place where I was. So, the landscape seems small compared to the size of the moon, but it's absolutely real.

In an evening with a slightly veiled sky, I took this photo showing the light reflected by the earth on the dark side of the Moon. Due to the long exposure, which is necessary for this subject, some stars emerged in the background

During the partial eclipse of August 2017, in one of the hundreds of photos I took, the silhouette of a distant airplane appears on the Moon

In preparation for the two great eclipses of 2018/2019 here is the shot of the partial eclipse of August 2017. The moon rose already eclipsed and in the last phases. This is a mosaic that get the various phases of the eclipse. Each image has the saturation increased to view the weak real colors of the lunar surface

The shooting conditions were not favorable at all: the ISS just arrived at negative magnitudes and its height on the horizon did not become spectacular. Anyway, I decided to try to get some photos. This is a photo of the ISS an orbit before the docking of the Soyuz with Paolo Nespoli on board, who was to start his third mission in orbit.

I was ready for the photo: I knew that that day the ISS, from my house, would have passed in front of the solar disk. Therefore, I could have shot its shape at a full speed on the disc of our star. At the right time I started a series of fast shots in succession to try to catch the international space station at least in a frame. Unfortunately I was unable to get it. However, this photo in visible light of the solar surface remain. it's visible an evident granulation and a spot in the bottom right.

Shooting of the Moon with an increase in the saturation of the photo in the post-processing phase to highlight the soft colors of the moon's surface. This colors are caused by the different chemical composition of the various areas of the surface. it's a pity having increased the contrast too much. Maybe one day I will post-process this photo better

This an attempt of shooting Saturn with the D3200. I immediately realized that I had to raise the sensitivity too much and in fact the result is not the best

Once I learned the technique of the stacking I get involved with the planets. Series of images that show the growth in quality over time

This is the first moon I took with the stacking method. It's a mosaic of two panels. So they are two videos elaborated distinctly and then united

Lucky shot of the moon rising behind some hills about 5km away. The great distance makes the trees appear smaller.

The shot of the 2016 passage of the comet C/2013 US10 Catalina on the day of the minimum distance from Earth. In this shot I focused incorrectly

The earthshine is the light of the sun that reflecting on the surface of the earth weakly illuminates the dark side of the moon. This glow is visible even with the naked eye, in some lunar phases.

The moon with the C8

The first experiment of shooting at the Moon. A wrong focusing is visible in some panels

Sequence of the partial eclipse of the sun in March 2015. Not having the photographic adapter yet, the photos were taken by placing the camera on a tripod behind the telescope and covering the space between the camera and the telescope with a black sheet