Chance to spot a 28 hour old Moon tonight for about forty minutes after sunset. It seems like the weather may not allow this (what a change!) but even a break in the cloud would allow a glimpse of this crescent. Bring your binoculars just in case.

For those of you completing the Astronomical League's Lunar Club program this is a chance to spot that elusive sub-40 hour old Moon. Tomorrow night of course it's 52 hours so get it while you can.

Crescent visibility times for April and May are:



The moon's age is its age when setting. Data is for Dublin.

Gary Nugent

Crescent Moon visible tonight in Galway, cloud just cleared here from 9.11- 9.17, very slim crescent, barely visible to the naked eye, did anyone else on the west coast manage to spot it between the showers?

Ronan GAC

All, got a super view from Cavan last night (wed) at 8:50pm to 10pm, low in the northwest. Nearly Completely clear!! That at 55hrs.


Keith...

Nice one Keith,
Amazingly, the clouds parted here in Limerick for 3 hours last night and got a nice view of the cresent, dont think I've ever seen such a small phase.



Both taken at 21:56 on the 21st of April from Limerick, using a 4 inch celestron with a canon eos 300d, the left image is 1/30th of a second, while the one on the right is 1 sec, taken at F5 and at iso100.
The fainter tries to show the moon at the correct illumination, so not to wash it out.

Dave, beautiful shots! I wish I could afford the eos300d, it's got some great reviews. Were these taken through the telescope/eyepiece? It's hard to get the right balance so as not to wash out the 'darkside'. They look well cool! Question for ya - how did you 'stitch' these 2 shots together?, what software?, I've been looking to do this as i have a few shots of the phases of Venus from December last i'd like to put together

Keith..

P.S My personal best moonsighting was about 32hrs before new last year.

Thanks Keith,
I managed to get a T adapter for the canon, so I just place it at the prime focus (with no eyepiece or camera lens). I use a remote control shutter release, otherwise the shots get blurred, keep in mind that I took over 40 pictures and these were the best 2, sometimes the wind here makes the camera shake (I'm on a bit of a hill here). I should have set the camera to a faster "film" speed, like 800 or 1600, but in my rush to avoid the clouds.......
I set the pic size to 3kx2k so I can zoom in and loose no detail, then I reduce the resolution, otherwise you end up with a 1-6 meg picture.
these are single pics, no stacking was done nor was there any enhancing.

I used photoshop to paste the 2 pictures together, just open the 2 pics in photoshop, draw a square/rectangle around one image, and then drag it into the second image, expand the canvas if you need to.
Since this camera/scope combination gives a field of veiw of about 2.75x1.75 degrees, its very easy to paste images into eash other (the images I show here are cropped).
Lets hope the eclipse in early May is clear.