We do not think of the moon as having colour. However on a photograph taken at 15hrs 25min UT on 16 July 2000 in the closing partial phases of the total lunar eclipse olive green colouration is prominent just below the bright crater Aristarchus in the image below. The same tint, somewhat subdued, is also visible, below it near to the lunar limb. This is only a section of the image, and only the brightness and contrast have been adjusted. The whole image may be examined in the item dealing with this eclipse which appears elsewhere on this site.

As the disc of the moon covers the brilliant photosphere of the sun, the thin pink layer of chromosphere comes into view briefly for a few seconds before being obscured by the advancing disc of the moon. At the same time the hot pink jets of the prominences are seen erupting from the obscured solar surface. These are seen in the image below just seconds after the end of totality on 21^st June 2001. During the total phase of the eclipse the ghostly outer atmosphere or corona of the sun is seen streaming outwards along the magnetic lines of force. (Refer also 'Articles' and the 'Astronomical Trips/Eclipse Expeditions' section.)

The inner Planet Mercury in grazing transit across the Sun on 16 November 1999. Mercury is both 38% the Earth's distance from the Sun and 38% it's diameter. (Nothing meaningful in the co-incidence.) If the Earth (the largest of the inner planets) was seen at this distance it would have 2.6 times the diameter. If the Earth were placed at the distance of the Sun, it would be 1.6 times the diameter. This serves as a good indication of the size of inner terrestrial type planets, compared with a star.

This is more appropriately an illustration of photo/image processing. An electronic camera was held against the eyepiece of the 41cm telescope and photos of Jupiter and Saturn obtained. These were then processed to enhance the image etc.

Twice in its 29½ year orbit about the sun Saturn presents its rings edgewise to the Earth. In fact around this period every fifteen years the Earth may cross the ring plane several times (since its motion around the sun is nearly thirty times as fast). The Earth can also be on the other side of the ring plane from the sun when the light is seen to filter through the ring system unevenly.

The result of this motion is that the glorious rings which can be angled over 26º to our line of sight, after becoming angled less and less over several years, are presented edge on, and being very thin (only tens of kilometers or less, thick), they disappear from view for a short time leaving a dark band of their shadow across the planets equator. Apart from the ring phenomena, this is also a good time to easily locate Saturn's moons strung out in a row, and view the transits and shadow transits of Saturn's enormous moon, Titan. The following photograph was taken on 1^st March 1980 and overexposed to bring out the fainter moons (six are visible) together with a trace of ring against the planet on the right. The last edge on presentation of the rings was in 1995..

Only discovered in 1930, Pluto is a small enigmatic world that can only barely be glimpsed as a faint starlike point in larger amateur telescopes. It is difficult to distinguish from faint stars and so photographs are often taken several days apart which reveal its slow motion around the sun. These two photographs were taken on the 1^st and 3^rd July 1981.

As the moon, asteroids, and planets follow their orbits, to an observer on Earth they pass in front of and occult stars or other solar system bodies behind them. Much can be learned from such occultations. For example when Jupiter occulted the bright double star Beta Scorpii in 1971, the brighter component was plainly seen to be dimming and twinkling for a number of minutes as it shone through thicker and thicker layers of the planet's atmosphere.

The following is another photograph that says as much about photography as astronomy. Taken with a 508mm F5.6 telephoto on 23^rd May 1998 of Comet C/1998 J1 (Soho) crossing near the stars of Orion's belt it does show the remarkable green colour of the comet's head. (The image was processed for brightness and contrast only.) It also shows some clearly orange stars and the purple halo (generated by the lens) surrounding the brighter stars. (This purple halo also occurs with refracting telescopes.) Also note the distorted shape of the bright star on the left - another artifact of the lens when a star is near the edge of the field.

The north celestial pole region. Polaris is the bright star with the circular image on the upper right. The other stars all have trailed images increasing in length the further they are away from Polaris which is very near the pole. Ursa Minor, the small bear, is upside down to the left of Polaris, compared to the great bear Ursa Major which is to the lower left on the photograph. (Alaska Aug. 2000)

By contrast, the South Celestial Pole does not have any bright stars nearby. The following is a cropped and enlarged section of the centre of a 35mm frame taken with a 50mm lens. The images were allowed to trail for five minutes, then tracked for five and then allowed to trail for a further five. Therefore each trail has a star image in the centre. In the southern hemisphere Sigma Octantis at magnitude 5.5 is the pole star, but over a degree from the pole, a very poor relation to Polaris in the northern hemisphere at magnitude 2.0 and 3/4 of a degree from the pole. Sigma Octantis is the left star in the nearly horizontal line of three stars that are just below the pole in the picture below. The actual position of the pole lies directly above Sigma at nearly the same distance from Sigma as the right hand member of this line of three stars.

More than half of the stars in the sky are members of a double or multiple system. These systems are very interesting to observe, particularly those where the surface temperature of the stars differs, and so differing colours are displayed. One of the most beautiful is Albireo or Beta Cygni where the cooler star is a golden yellow and the hotter a turquoise.

(Skeptics please note: To truly show the colours a very short exposure should be taken, but this would be most uninteresting to view because the stars would be tiny faint dots. Here the longer exposure overexposed and 'washed' the colour from the core of the images. The colours in the outer parts of each of the images was then 'lifted' to colour the overexposed central discs and present a reasonable approximation.)

The well known supernova hunter Rev Bob Evans discovered two supernovae (or exploding stars) in the galaxy NGC 1559, the first in July 1984 (left) and the second in October 1986 (right). Compare these images of the same galaxy and you will see the first supernova is nearly central, and the second supernova is on the spiral arm to the right. Supernovae such as these, discovered by amateur hunters, are typically at around 50 million light years distant. This means that the flaring of light that we see for a few weeks or so, occurred 50 million years ago.