I recently discovered the Humble Bundle site through a colleague, and I really got to like the site! Imagine, you not only get to have great ebooks and games for a price you decide, you also have a choice to donate a portion of the money you pay to charity! Whoever coined the idea for this website is a genius.

My first ever purchase on this site is a book bundle consisting of Astronomy-related titles! Astronomy is one of the fields I'm passionate about so I didn't need to bat an eyelash before I purchased the ebooks from this site. One of the titles included in that bundle is A Stargazing Program for Beginners by James Carter.


I've started reading the book since the start of the year, which is perfect because the stargazing guidelines in this book are divided into months. So far, I've been learning a lot of things, especially in navigating my way around the night sky.

Here's some of the things you'll be able to learn during the months of January to March:

January
- locating the Big Dipper
- finding Polaris using Big Dipper
- finding Polaris using Cassiopeia
- finding Sirius using Orion

February
- measuring the night sky
     1 degree - finger
     5 degrees - width of 3 fingers
     20 - palm wide - from thumb to little finger
- locating the Winter Circle asterism, which is composed of the stars Sirius, Rigel, Aldebaran, Capella, Castor, Pollux, and Procyon
- locating the Milky Way arm, which is in between Procyon and Sirius
- locating Bellatrix, Aldebaran and Pleiades
- locating the Winter Triangle, which is composed of Procyon, Sirius, and Betelguese

March 
- finding the ecliptic and how to use it in locating planets
- celestial motion: stars rise 4 minutes earlier each night
- analyzing Ursa Major (where the Big Dipper is part of)
- astronomical conjunctions
- phases of the moon; observing an earthshine

I tried photographing the sky during those months, and here are two of the best shots I took.

See the Big Dipper? (Sagada, January 2017)

Canis Major, Sagittarius, and Taurus (Pangasinan, March 2017)

I like how in the photo above, the stars Betelgeuse and Aldebaran stood out because of their orange color.

I want to get out more and take photos of stars. It sucks to live in an urban city with all the light pollution around. My mission now is that whenever I'll be out of town, I make sure I bring my good 'ol SLR and the tripod so I can take more starry photos in the future.

Here's to more sky observations and clear nights in the future! 🍷⭐

I took these photos early January this year. It was a clear night so I took advantage and grabbed the camera with the tripod.

There's the moon!

closeup shot

A crescent moon is my favorite. The camera was not able to capture the beauty of it because it was having difficulty capturing the faint light from the moon.

It's another thing for constellations. The picture below is captured in a different date, a moonless night.

I see Orion!

I've photographed Orion in the past and it's been a while.

Lepus gets captured too, apparently. Hover the image to see the constellation lines and labels.

I can't seem to locate the stars in Gemini though. We can see a glimpse of the Great Nebula in Orion too. Yay!

This is the largest number of constellations I have captured in one image. It would have been nicer to span the horizon to scope more stars. I would be needing another kind of camera (fisheye!) for that.

The rainy days have come so I guess I won't be having starry night sessions in a while.

It's the weekend! So I had the time to do some skygazing Friday night and good thing the moon rose on a later hour that night. At around 11PM, I noticed a white light emanating from our room's window and I already knew it's from the moon (because the lamp post's light outside our house is orange so it's impossible that light came from it).

My sky view from my window (obviously)

And my oh my, we don't have just the moon tonight, there's Jupiter at sight too! (*￣Ｏ￣)ノ



At first I thought it was Venus. But checking on Stellarium, it's Jupiter indeed.

screenshot from Stellarium

It's the full moon! Tonight, the moon is 100% illuminated by the sun. For ordinary observers, you might say that hey, it's full moon since yesterday and the past few days. But if you look closely, there are still parts of the moon that was not illuminated yesterday.


Aside from the moon in full phase, there's another show in the sky in store for us tonight. It's the Leonids meteor shower peak tonight until dawn tomorrow! 

Too bad, I couldn't observe because I have work tomorrow and I need to go to bed early. T^T But if you can, try to watch. Meteor showers always fascinate me. :)

That's all for tonight's sky watch! :)

I am thinking of adding another section in the blog tagged Sky Watch, wherein I could document my astrophotography adventures in the future. This will help me become more motivated in consistently looking up in the sky for interesting sights. :)

The moon was out again tonight, and luckily there are no clouds in sight. 



It's almost the full moon! :D

~o~

reference: lunaf.com