“Crepuscular” rays are rays of sunshine formed by holes in the clouds, otherwise known as sunbeams. They’re particular visible around sunset or in cloudy, stormy skies. While tonight’s sunset wasn’t quite five-star, it did have a few crepuscular rays on display.
And then, just in case you forgot (or ignored) last night:
Filed under Photography, Weather
Yep, there it is!
(Click to embiggenate!)
Looking very bright, very red. Beautiful, along with Venus (which set about an our after sunset), Jupiter (still up fairly high and bright), Saturn (about halfway between Mars and Jupiter), and the moon (rising an hour or so after Mars tonight).
This was the biggie tonight, the closest Mars will be to Earth in decades! If you missed it, if it was cloudy, if you just had to work, well…
…it will all (except for the moon) look about 99.99% EXACTLY THE SAME tomorrow night. And the night after that, and the night after that, and the night after that…
So if you missed it, if it was cloudy, if you just had to work, then go look tomorrow, or next week, or whenever it’s clear and you’re free. The moon’s position in the sky moves significantly from night to night (28 days to go all the way from full to new back to full, so 360°/28 = 12.8° a day, or roughly 1/14th of the distance from horizon to horizon per day) but while the planets move, it’s really rare for them to move very quickly.
Enjoy. Take the time to find someone like me with a telescope and ask nice if they can take a look. Get even a decent pair of binoculars to see Mars’ disk and the Galilean moons of Jupiter.
Don’t do clickbait. Ignore the websites that say “TODAY!” is the day like Mars suddenly appears out of a dark sky for 24 hours and then vanishes.
T’ain’t so. Be smarter than clickbait. Spread the word!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
Busy weekend.
There are those who say it’s better than sitting around bored all weekend.
I wouldn’t know. It might be sort of nice to try, just to be able to make an informed judgement, right?
Filed under Paul, Photography
With three hangers in use for parties today (it’s one of our key revenue sources, a GREAT place for a wedding, birthday party, bar/bat mitzvah, quinceanera, retirement party, movie shoot – seriously, it’s the biggest venue in Ventura County) a lot of the planes were parked out on the ramp. It was a good time to go stand out among them and take a nice, wide panoramic view:
(Click to blow it up to full size)
Most are CAF aircraft, some are owned by CAF SoCal members, some are AAF aircraft.
From left to right (more or less):
The majority of these aircraft are flying. The C-47 is being restored by the AAF, our C-46 hasn’t flown in a few years and would need some work to be airworthy again, and the UH-1 helicopter has actually been converted into to a fancy & stylish promotional beer wagon. The other twelve? All have flown recently, and at least four of these aircraft were flying today.
If you’re in the Southern California area, you should come out and visit us some time. Visit on a Saturday and I’ll probably be there, I would be glad to show you around.
Better yet, come out in three weeks for the Wings Over Camarillo airshow. Not only can you see all of these aircraft, you’ll see a ton more, with many of them (including just about anything we can put into the air) flying and performing aerobatics. Bring sunscreen, we’ll sell you the beer, soda, margaritas, other folks will sell you the food, it will be a great time!
Filed under CAF, Panorama, Photography
Earlier today there was a spectacular lunar eclipse, the longest one of the century. In North America, we saw none of it because it happened in the middle of the afternoon from our viewpoint, which means we were on the sunny side of the the planet, not the moony side.
We’ve seen our share of lunar eclipses over the years – I’ve got pictures here and here. But not today.
Yet when the full moon came up an hour or so ago, it was still a deep shade of orange and red. WHAT DARK SORCERY IS THIS??!!
Similar look and effect, different cause. The eclipse makes the moon look red and orange and dark because it’s passing into the shadow of the Earth. Los Angeles and Southern California saw the moon look red and orange and dark because we’re seeing it through clouds of smoke from some large brush fires off to the east.
I found my tripod, so the pictures are better. Some of the “blobs” on these images aren’t lunar, but leaves and branches as the moon rises and we’re looking through the trees from our back yard.
It most certainly is a pretty sight. This evening during dinner one of the big hawks came and perched out in the open on one of these branches. I decided to sit and eat dinner instead of jumping up and grabbing the camera. This may or may not indicate “progress.”
As the moon got up a bit the extent of the smoke and haze became apparent. We haven’t seen the mountains in a couple of days, but given what the folks in the fire zones are dealing with all over the state, we’re good.
I hope you got to see the eclipse if you’re on the other side of the planet and the skies were clear!
Filed under Astronomy, Castle Willett, Photography, Space
Some we’ve seen, some we’ve just seen signs of…
Rabbits? Check! Some nights you can spook or or two on the lawn if you go out late, some nights you can spook five or six.
Raccoons? Check! Haven’t seen any in our yard or heard them on the roof (we don’t have that super secret hidey hole that they loved like the old house did) but we did see two of them about the size of full-sized beagle or poodle, just trotting down the sidewalk at sunset one night.
Gophers? Check! Haven’t seen them, but their holes are in the yard and I keep filling them in and they keep getting dug back out.
Skunks? Check! There was a dead one in the middle of the road earlier this week… (You fill in the rest of the lyrics!)
Something (probably one or several of the above) has been digging. First I saw a good-sized hole in the back yard (size 10 included for scale):
Then there was something digging in the front garden:
…and here we’ll find little footprints sometimes that make me think it’s raccoons.
Birds? Yeah, we have the usual sparrows and crows and hummingbirds and hawks and now this oriole.
Bats? Check! Not quite the crowd that we had (for whatever reason) at the old house, but there are bats.
I love it!
Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography
Last night when we took the scopes out in the front yard, I saw these guys making another appearance:
Timing is everything – the gardeners come tomorrow. This is a losing battle!
Filed under Castle Willett, Photography
Front Yard Star Parties – They’re Not Just For The Weekend Any More!
Even though it was Tuesday, I had the scope out tonight. The Long-Suffering Wife had been talking about our previous views of the moon and Jupiter last week and had invited over a few friends to take a gander – and to show off the new house as well. (It was a two-fer!)
It’s a little later in the month so the moon is still low in the east at sundown, so setting up the scope by the house or in the back yard wasn’t going to work. But down by the end of the driveway we could peek over the house and see the moon between the trees.
Even before sundown, even with the sky not yet dark at all, the moon was gorgeous.
Even with just a quickie photo using my iPhone held up to the eyepiece.
Our friends that showed up enjoyed the viewing quite a bit – hard to say if it was the adults or the kids who liked it more. Once it got dark the moon was fantastic to look at, Jupiter clearly was showing a few prominent cloud bands and all four Galilean moons were strung out in a line and clearly visible. But the show stealer was that “little star” right next to the moon – turns out that was Saturn, rings visible clearly.
The the neighbor family with the three dogs wandered by – EVERYBODY had a good time and got an eyeful!
There’s nothing like hearing the oohs and aahs of people looking through a telescope and seeing Jupiter or Saturn or sunrise on the rim of Grimaldi for the first time!
We’re gonna call this one a big success, despite a few high clouds, that tree that tried to keep getting in the way, the 90° and humidity even an hour after sunset, and all of the bugs.
Filed under Astronomy, Castle Willett, Photography, Space
Have I mentioned that I take a **LOT** of pictures? (Hint — I have)
As proof that if you do that, eventually you’ll take one that just pops, where you look at it and say, “Damn! I took that picture and it’s just about perfect!”
Here’s one of those that I took.
August, 2009 – Stowe, Vermont
Filed under Photography, Travel
This one caught me by surprise. We only moved less than a mile, we’re still in the same community, we’re simply now near the top of the hill where before we were at the bottom. So most of the existing wildlife we’ve seen (rabbits, raccoons, crows, lizards, etc) has been pretty much the same.
This pair (and I’m pretty sure it was a pair, a male and a female) were a complete surprise and really stood out.
I’m pretty sure this is the male. There was a similarly sized bird that was never far away, moved around the large tree in our back yard together, feeding. The other one was darker, no bright colors that I could see, but it almost never came out where I could get a clear view at it. When I first saw it I thought it was a mockingbird.
The extremely bright yellow bird was constantly moving, feeding, making it hard to get a good shot. But I can guarantee that I’ve never seen one like this in the nearly thirty years I’ve lived in the area.
A few cropped images (somewhat blurry since it NEVER stood still for more than a second):
Big body, the size of a mockingbird or a touch larger.
Bright, bright yellow, with jet black wings and tail and black markings on the face.
The beak is long, as are the legs.
White stripes across the black wings.
If you Google “yellow and black birds” you get a few options, the first of which doesn’t match. The American Goldfinch is smaller than this bird, and the beak is all wrong.
I did find reference to a “yellow-headed blackbird.” The map shows that they do live in this area. (News to me!!) The only problem there is that it looks like only the head is black for this species – obviously here a big chunk of the body is yellow.
There’s an “Audubon’s Oriole” that looks more like this, but it’s apparently only found in Texas. This pair would have to be way, way lost.
This seems to be a more likely option for me, the hooded oriole. I think that’s our guy. And it says that the females are generally darker with little bright color.
Welcome, my hooded oriole dude & dudette mate. Help yourself to the seeds, and especially to the yard’s bugs!
Filed under Critters, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 