Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
March 13, 2024 · 22:15

Flaming Sunset – March 13th

I had another post and pictures all set up and ready to go. Then the sun set.

Holy freakin’ guacamole, Batman!

If you’re lucky you might get one or two sunsets a year in this part of the world that are this colorful, saturated, vibrant, and amazing.

Tonight was that night. Complete with a thin, fingernail of a three-day old crescent moon in the upper left.

Neighbors were driving by and stopping to stare with us. And why not? If you see this going on and you don’t notice or don’t care, please check for a pulse!

This spectacular display went on for over ten minutes. I even had time to shoot some panoramas.

While the purples started to fade to black up high, the reds and oranges near the horizon just got brighter and more vibrant.

All things are transient, none so much as a sunset. The planet’s just going to keep on spinning, which in the big picture is probably a good thing.

One last gasp, then the stars started popping out. Jupiter came out just above the wires, over at the left edge of the picture. Orion is high up to the left, the easiest constellation to pick out. The Plieades cluster is close to the Moon. Somewhere out there is that comet I talked about yesterday.

Spectacular!

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Sunsets

March 12, 2024 · 23:29

Eclipse Minus 26 Days

Oh, look what popped up in the sunset skies, two days past new moon!

Just a thumbnail, hanging up there with the lit sliver pointing the way toward the Sun.

 

After it got a little bit darker, Jupiter’s bright off to the left. There’s a new comet that might be visible after dark over to the right, about where the top of that tall tree is. But you’ll need a dark sky to see it, and binoculars will help.

I went out before it all set, had my good binoculars, but struck out on the comet. I found the guide stars that the finder chart used to point out its location and it should have been right there – but I couldn’t see a thing. The surface brightness of the comet is probably much lower than the background illumination of all of LA’s light pollution combined with Ventura County’s coastal haze.

But in twenty-six days? By that time, assuming the comet hasn’t faded out of sight, it will have moved over to the other side of Jupiter and during that 4:24 of eclipse, it should be clearly visible, along with Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and the eclipsed Sun. Will I actually be able to see it?

In 26 days, 9 hours, and 13 minutes we’ll find out!

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Filed under Space, Sunsets

March 11, 2024 · 23:31

Spring Growth Against A Blue & White Sky

The tree next door has exploded with buds and baby leaves.

I took the opportunity to play with my DSLR camera, what is now a eighteen-year-old Canon that’s shot a LOT of pictures, all over the world. These days I’m noticing that the auto-focus function doesn’t work all that well, so I’m trying to use it more with manual focus.

Yes, I can (usually) do a better job of getting a picture in sharp focus, but I get one really good picture out of ten where the autofocus gets ten pictures that are about 98% in focus.

And in the process of going out to test, I got out of my office for ten minutes and looked at trees, sky, clouds, hawks, and hummingbirds. I call that a win.

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Filed under Photography

March 10, 2024 · 23:38

SpaceX Falcon9 Starlink Launch From Vandenberg – March 10th

I’m going to have to start putting the date into the titles on these posts. What used to be a “once or twice a year” and then became “once every couple of months” is now a “once a week or so” cadence and that’s expected to nearly double again in 2025.

The Falcon9 has just gone supersonic and through MaxQ (the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure) when it climbs over the hill from my viewpoint, 115 miles to the southeast of the launch site.

As it climbs and the air pressure drops off, the exhaust trail lengthens.

As the atmosphere gets even more thin and the plume gets longer and cooler through expansion, the colors start to change.

Just before the nine first stage main engines cut off and the first stage drops away (to land on a ship off of Baja California) the plume is a rainbow of color.

MECO! Main Engine Cut Off.

The second stage engine lights and the top part of the rocket starts accelerating toward 17,000 mph. From this far away for a night launch, the naked eye can see an orange dot moving along quickly. Binoculars or a telephoto lens will clearly show the second stage exhaust plume, a V-shaped cone stretching out behind the vehicle. Here you can see it (click on the image to see it full sized!) traveling just below the bright star Sirius.

Again, click on the image to see it full sized – the second state is passing Sirius.

And leaving Sirius behind, headed down toward the southern horizon where I lose it behind the Santa Monica Mountains.

I really need a somewhat bigger lens (this is a 70-300mm zoom, I would love to have a 600mm telephoto) and a better tripod. The good news is that with weekly launches and the cadence speeding up even more, there should be lots of opportunities for practice!

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Filed under Photography, Space

March 9, 2024 · 23:44

The Race Is On!

It’s going to be a marathon and an adventure. It might be stressful at times but I intend to make it glorious, not exhausting.

It’s a four-dimensional finish line to this race – space and time. The space – Kerrville, TX. The time, 13:32:07 on April 8th, 2024.

(Image: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio)

Kerrville is expecting somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 visitors for the day of the eclipse. It’s going to be a madhouse.

To get a room there a four-day minimum was required, non-refundable, and at somewhere between three and five times the normal hotel rates. Ye olde “supply & demand” at work!

I’ll be driving out from Los Angeles, about twenty hours of driving, but over three days. That should give me sufficient slack to allow for any unexpected issues or detours.

I didn’t even think about flying out and getting a rental car – those reservations were pretty much booked and overbooked months ago.

In order to take that time off of work I’m going like a banshee now to try to not only keep up with my current workload but to get ahead and stay ahead for when I leave. (No good deed…)

So, a marathon, to have my butt and hopefully a trunk full of camera gear in a sunny spot in central Texas in the early afternoon twenty-seven days from now.

It WILL be glorious!

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Filed under Astronomy, Space, Travel

March 8, 2024 · 23:46

Clear & A Gazillion

See that Sun? We’re only one day away from the new moon, so somewhere in this view is also that Moon, even if you can’t see it. (It’s probably about where the tops of those palm trees are, about 15º-ish west of the sun.)

You can’t see the Moon because it’s being seriously backlit by a freakin’ bright star, but it’s still there, creeping in its orbit closer and closer to an alignment which is perfect… But this month, they’ll miss. No part of the Sun will be blocked by the Moon from our viewpoint, and conversely, no part of the Moon’s shadow will touch the Earth.

Next month, on the other hand…

In 28 days, on April 8th, the alignment will be absolutely perfect and the shadow of the moon will swing in an arc from the Pacific Ocean toward the northeast across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, before heading out over the Canadian maritime provinces.

A map of the contiguous U.S. shows the path of the 2024 total solar eclipse stretching on a narrow band from Texas to Maine. (Map from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

Yes, I’ll be there. With my son living in San Antonio, I’ll be headed to Kerrville, TX as my base, sitting right on the centerline of the path of totality with 4:24 of totality.

Yes, you’ll be hearing about it here. Probably just about every day once we get into April.

If anyone has questions, feel free to drop them into the comments. I’ll try to answer them all.

Clear skies!!!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

March 7, 2024 · 23:35

Ominous

Yet another one of those days when the forecast did not include rain. And yet…

Those are not puffy, happy, “fair weather” clouds. If those are in the Midwest, there are tornado warning sirens going off.

And it stretched across a good stretch of the sky. 30 seconds later it was raining pretty hard.

Not nearly as hard as it was raining to the east of us where that BIG storm was.

And when it was over…

It wasn’t a full rainbow. Over to the right it was black as night as that thunderstorm had moved a bit south. But to the north, for a minute…

Yeah. It’s that whole “hope” thing.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather

March 6, 2024 · 23:24

Fine Feathered Friends – March 06th

What a pleasant surprise today! I was taking a quick break and grabbing a soda in the kitchen when I saw something large-ish going through the pine trees on the slope beyond the back yard. It wasn’t any mourning dove, much larger, some sort of raptor. I grabbed a camera and headed out into the rain.

I figured that it had just been passing through and I might see it circling over the canyon someplace. It was rainy and starting to close in so I didn’t see anything in the sky. Suddenly my pattern recognition kicked in and I realized that this guy was sitting right there, staring at me.

After I got a couple of pictures from the back yard, I decided to see if the hawk would sit still while I went down the stairs to the “lower level.” To my surprise and delight, it did! Although it was giving me some serious stink eye.

I was still maybe 20-25 feet away and about even with it, although if I had tried to go over to the tree it was in I would have been 30 feet below it. That hill is steep. I guess it decided that I was mostly harmless. (I am! Mostly…)

By this point the rain was coming down steadily and while the hawk was looking all over, it didn’t seem too happy about the meteorological conditions.

What kind of hawk is it? It’s a mystery, sort of. I ran four different pictures through the Merlin Bird ID app (from Cornell Lap, get it!) and all four said it might be a Cooper’s Hawk or a Red-shouldered Hawk. In either case it’s probably a juvenile, but that’s more likely if it’s a Red-shouldered Hawk. That’s my bet, simply because the Cooper’s Hawks that I’ve seen up close have solid brown or tan chests, where these patterns are more like the Red-shouldered Hawks. I could have positively ID it if it had sounded off, their calls are much different. But not a peep was heard.

I expected it to fly off any second, but it just sat there. After about fifteen minutes I was more wet than I really liked, and I had the option of going inside. I came back out an hour later and it was still sitting there, which I found really surprising. But it was gone a half-hour after that.

I shot a couple minutes of video while waiting and hoping it would either sound off, fly away, or both. No joy on all counts, but it’s a gorgeous creature!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography, Video, Weather

March 5, 2024 · 23:34

Random Old Photos – March 05th

Almost twenty years ago. Vermont.

The Connecticut River from the top of Mount Ascutney.

It will be time to try to go back again this summer. Let’s try to make it happen.

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Filed under Travel

March 4, 2024 · 23:48

Yet Another Picturesque SoCal Sunset

This one is actually from a week or so ago – today was clear and “boring” as colors and clouds go.

This one didn’t start with a lot of color, but the clouds and definition in the structures was exceptional.

As always, the silhouetted palm trees were splendid.

We finally got to see a little bit of color.

And more shadows of cloud on cloud. So freakin’ gorgeous. Tell me, how often do you look for something like this in your busy life? If it’s happening, how often do you spend ten minutes just watching? If the answer to either question is “never,” you might need to re-evaluate your life choices.

We’re looking hard a houses up in the high desert someplace. The sunsets and sunrises there can be even more spectacular (see these, for example), but I hope I can find a place with a couple of palm trees to add some character to that horizon while the sky’s doing tricks.

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather