Updates in this Newsletter- Get Snapped by Cassini!
- Supermoon Super Pictures
- Calendar Competition voting closed with a record number of voters
- An Eclipse Chasing Time-Lapse Journal
- Aurora Outburst last Saturday night
- Astro goodies at the IceInSpace Shop
* Get Snapped by Cassini!
On July 19th (July 20th AEST), the Cassini spacecraft will take a picture of Saturn while the Sun is blocked by the disc of the planet. What will normally be a spectacular picture on its own, will be made even better because Earth will be in the picture too!
While our whole civilisation will only be ~2 pixels across, it'll no doubt be a spectacular image and will make waves across the social media world.
A similar image was captured by Cassini in 2006 (image below), with the Earth just a tiny dot to the left of the planet, just outside the brightest rings. More info on Slate by the Bad Astronomer:
http://slate.me/11oQIzw
* Supermoon Super Pictures
The largest Full Moon of the year, aka the "Super Moon", happens when the Full Moon occurs at Perigee - the closest point to Earth on the Moon's elliptical orbit. It's only 14% bigger, and isn't noticeable to the naked eye, but it gets social media and sometimes the mainstream media pretty excited every year as you see mockups of Moons that take up half the sky. It does get people outside looking at the Moon though, and that's always a good thing. I just hope they weren't disappointed when it didn't meet their lofty expectations!
It also gets the photographers outside too - trying to recreate in a real image, what the photoshop artists create as fake images. The trick is to use a very long telephoto lens (400mm or more), with the Moon low on the horizon, and have a foreground subject a long way away from you - either in silhouette or with enough light so that the Moon appears big next to it.
Here's some fantastic examples captured by the IceInSpace Community:
* Calendar Competition voting closed with a record number of voters
Voting for the
IceInSpace Calendar Competition 2014 has now closed, and we had a record-breaking 1100 people vote for their favourite images.
David (Astrovisuals) and I are now contacting the winning photographers, and they will be announced around mid-July.
The winner of the Voting competition is Patti Barrett from the USA. Her vote was one of the 1100, and she was pulled randomly from the virtual barrel and wins 5 free calendars. Congrats!
The calendar will be on-sale from mid-August from the
IceInSpace Shop. Stay tuned!
* An Eclipse Chasing Time-Lapse Journal
Jia Hao, a Malaysian amateur astronomer, visited Australia with 4 friends to capture and Annular Solar Eclipse.
This amazing video is the story of his journey. He says:
"An annular solar eclipse swept across Australia on May 10, 2013. Together with 4 other fellow Malaysian astronomy hobbyists, we embarked on a road trip in Western Australia to chase the eclipse at it's best - a sunrise "ring of fire".
16 days, 4000km+ of road travel, the trip covered some of the most deserted and most beautiful places of Western Australia. Despite the unstable weather, we were blessed with an unforgettably jaw-dropping "ring of fire", mesmerisingly colourful moments when the sun dipped to the vast, flat Indian Ocean, and joyful nights when the milky way shined at its full glory far away from city lights."
Read more on IceInSpace, and
watch in HD on Vimeo.
* Aurora Outburst last Saturday night
A KP7 Aurora outburst took place on Saturday night, and photographers living far enough South headed out to capture the sometimes elusive Aurora Australis. They weren't disappointed!
Some images from our IceInSpace community:
Keep an eye out in the
Nightscapes Forum for more!
* Astro goodies at the IceInSpace Shop
The
IceInSpace Shop has stuff for space enthusiasts, beginners and more. Take a look at some of this:
The shop site will be familiar to anyone who's purchased online; you can simply add the products to your cart, view and modify your cart, and checkout when you're ready to place your order. At checkout, you will need to create a
new IceInSpace Shop account, which is
separate to your IceInSpace Forum registration.
The IceInSpace Shop can be found here:
http://shop.iceinspace.com.au
Thanks for reading! Keep looking up!
