TRAC Monthly Report: July 2025
- Category: Monthly Reports
- Author: JM
- Published: 03 Aug 2025
- Last updated: 10 Aug 2025
Summer Night Sky
Summer Constellations
During July, we saw the brightest stars in the most prominent summer constellations but not much more than that. We'll focus more on the summer constellations at the end of August and into September.
Lunar Observations
Astro Camera Test (05 Jul 2025)
One of our astronomy club's aims for 2025 is to fit a camera to the telescope so that we can see the Moon and planets on the computer screen and take better quality photos of them.
We're starting with a very basic astrocamera, the Svbony SV105 Planetary Camera.
We installed the recommended software (SharpCap) and then connected the camera to the laptop. We set up the telescope, and Matey aligned it with three bright stars so that it would automatically track the Moon as it gradually moved higher and westward.
There were no technical issues, but we ran into a physical problem; the Moon was too low! It went behind a tall tree, and when it emerged, it was very close to the roofs of houses.
The Moon was also quite difficult to find because the camera is "zoomed in" a long way. We got there in the end, but it wasn't easy.
Matey and I spent 90 minutes setting everything up, and the photo below is the best (only) result we got this time.
Image credit: JM/MK (TRAC)
Above image: A screenshot from the SharpCap software showing the only photo of the Moon we were able to take.
We'll try this again in August and/or September.
Moon–Antares Conjunction (07 Jul 2025)
The 91%-illuminated waxing gibbous Moon was positioned close to the red star Antares in Scorpius.
Image credit: JM (TRAC)
Above image: The Moon close to Antares, the orange dot to the top right of the Moon.
Full Moon (10 Jul 2025)
The sky was cloudy, so a more experimental type of photography was tried for this month's full moon.
Image credit: JM (TRAC)
Above image: July's Full Moon glows brightly behind TV aerials. This full moon was a sight to behold, especially with the antenna in the foreground.
Image credit: JM (TRAC)
Above image: This photo from the previous evening (09 Jul 2025) shows how low the Moon was again this month after June's ultra-low full moon.
Summary
It's a pity we got caught out by the unusually low altitude of the Moon this summer. If it were not for that, I think we'd have had a lot more luck with the camera. Next time, I'm confident that we'll get better results.
James M
TRAC Team Leader
03 Aug 2025 – Rainham, Kent
TRAC is an amateur astronomy group based in Rainham (Kent) in the United Kingdom.
On clear nights, you'll find us outside, observing stars, planets, moons, galaxies, satellites, meteors, and comets.
This monthly report is intended to keep club members informed of our observational activities, track progress towards the club's long-term goals, celebrate successes, and record memorable moments.
Unless stated otherwise, magnitude values refer to apparent magnitude and have usually been rounded to one decimal place; photos of deep-sky objects credited to TRAC were taken using a Seestar S50 smart telescope; our observations were made from Rainham, Kent; and times and dates are in the UK's local time zone (GMT or BST, depending on the time of year).
We welcome any questions, feedback, or suggestions you may have. Please let us know if anything is unclear or if you notice an error, inaccuracy, or typo. Contact us via email.
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