Category Archives: Astronomy

February 28, 2023 · 23:46

Goodbye February Clouds

It has been an unusually cloudy February around these parts. While that might normally be a novel, interesting, and very much needed thing, this year it comes at the end of a rather wet and rainy and cloudy December and January and there’s something in the sky that I want to watch!

Again tonight it was completely overcast by sunset, and by the time it got dark an hour later it was raining hard again.

No Venus and Jupiter tonight, again. That’s six of the last eight nights where I’ve been shut down by weather.

At least the weather looks to be better in the near future. We might even have a clear sky for tomorrow night, when the two bright planets will appear the closest to each other in the western sky at sunset.

If you’ve got a clear sky tomorrow at sunset, go take a look. Again, no equipment needed, although if you have binoculars you should be able to see the Galilean moons of Jupiter.

If you’re clouded out tomorrow, go take a look the next night. Or the next night. Or on the weekend. Or…

You know the drill. This is not a “tomorrow” thing, although the mainstream media will work hard to generate clickbait headlines. Jupiter will be heading toward the horizon and Venus will be heading up into the sky so they’ll pull apart for the next two or three weeks before Jupiter heads around the far side of the Sun from our viewpoint and Venus will be left by itself to be BRIGHT in the evening sky.

 

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February 27, 2023 · 23:47

No Venus & No Jupiter

They’re closer tonight than they were last night – celestial mechanics is sort of unstoppable – but we saw nothing from Los Angeles.

Sunset was an exercise in Chiaroscuro – very nice.

But there was no way we were going to see Venus or Jupiter. I couldn’t even see the moon overhead.

But an interesting sunset. You take what you can get.

An hour or so later when I went to double check…

Solid overcast & rain. And apparently more of that for the next couple of days.

It would be nice to get a clear sky on Wednesday, the day of closest approach, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it.

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February 26, 2023 · 20:50

Venus & Jupiter

It’s cold by LA standards (44º headed toward a low of about 37º – note that there are plenty of places up in the mountains which get much lower routinely because they can go up to over 10,000′) but the winds were down and the skies were clear (at least to the west, which is all that counts for this) so it was time for more pictures of the conjunction.

Jupiter’s on the top, Venus on the bottom.

They’re getting much closer together – compare to the pictures from four days ago.

With the 300mm lens I can’t QUITE get the focus sharp enough to see the planets as pinpoints and in turn see the Galilean moons near Jupiter. BUT, if you blow this picture up to full size you can see a dot just below Jupiter and another just at the top (more of a bump, just touching) which are Ganymede and Europa respectively.

Four days ago there was a crescent moon there. It’s moved on and is almost overhead, and about a quarter full. (Click on the photo to enlarge it to full sized, some nice detail there.)

As seen against the background stars, Venus is moving up and Jupiter is moving down. There’s nothing astronomically significant about a conjunction like this, it’s just a coincidence that happens periodically that the planets appear to be near each other from our position.

But it’s very pretty. They’ll be their closest on March 1st, four days from now. (I’m sure we’ll have more clouds between now and then.)

You should go see it if you can, it’s incredibly simple, a naked eye event. Find a cloudless evening about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, look to the west. There they are!

Go admire the universe!

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February 22, 2023 · 22:51

Venus & Jupiter & Crescent Moon

I told you! We got one last clear sunset to see Venus (at the bottom), Jupiter (at the top), and the 12% illuminated, three-day old crescent Moon before this cold, snowy storm moves into SoCal.

Stunning! This is using a hand-held iPhone in 30-gusting-to-40+ winds.

Using the big camera on a tripod there was a little less shaking and bouncing.

And close-up on the Moon and Jupiter. I was hoping to get a picture that showed a couple of Jupiter’s moons (three of the Galilean moons were visible) but with the wind, longer exposures look like modern art, not astrophotography.

You’ve got a day or two to see this with the Moon hanging around and a week to watch Jupiter and Venus get closer to each other. The closest approach will be March 1st. Then you have weeks to watch them pull apart. If you get a couple minutes after sunset and it’s clear, go take a few minutes to gander at our corner of the Universe!

That cold storm is definitely on its way. It was pushing 80º yesterday – tonight it was 43º headed to a low of 38º and with the wind the wind chill was right around freezing.

As for that even weirder weather headed our way, it’s a weather pattern that’s rare so there’s not a lot of baseline information in the computer models. For our location there’s still a chance of up to an inch of snow, but only down (as of the latest) to about 1,500 feet. Castle Peak (see in the bottom right of that first picture above) might get some snow on the top, as might the Santa Monica Mountains, south of us between the San Fernando and Conejo Valleys and the coast around Malibu. If we don’t have snow, we’ll get something on the order of 5″ of rain between now and Monday, so either way it’s going to be fun.

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February 21, 2023 · 23:36

Watch The Skies The Next Few Days!

If you’re just about anywhere for the next couple of weeks and you have a clear sky at sunset, look to the west just after sunset.

Remember when Venus and Saturn (and sometimes the young Moon) were all near each other in the evening sky about a month ago? Well, something similar and very bright is happening again.

This time it’s Jupiter and Venus. And for the next couple of days, the young Moon as well. For the next nine or ten days you’ll see Venus nearest the horizon with Jupiter above it, both quite bright. On March 1st they’ll appear the closest to each other (from our viewpoint, of course – in reality they’re a billion-plus miles apart) and then Jupiter will continue to sink toward the sunset and Venus will continue to rise above until Jupiter disappears in the glare in mid-March.

Again, as always for this sort of thing, ignore the mass media clickbait that will try to tell you, “TONIGHT!!!” March 1st they’ll appear the closest, but if it’s clear you’ll be able to easily see them for another month.

Yes, there will be pictures here. Later. After we get past…well…

In Los Angeles (and most of California) there’s no seeing anything other than clouds for several days as a large, unusual, and COLD storm moves in. It might not be the same cold that they’re getting in Chicago and Vermont, but there’s a finite chance that it could mean the oddest of odd events in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles – SNOW.

“1-4 inches” possible down to 1,000 feet??!! And yes, folks are asking specific questions about places near us like the Santa Monica Mountains, Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley, and so on.

Our house? We’re at about 1,060 feet according to the GPS fix on ForeFlight.

This could be interesting…

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February 8, 2023 · 23:32

Clear & A Million – 832 Of Them!

If you’re a pilot, you love to hear that the weather is “clear and a million.” That’s good visibility!

But tonight as the Sun set, it wasn’t just clear and a million. It was clear and 832,517,397 kilometers, all the way to Jupiter. (The bright spot visible at the top left.)

It was also 219,199,744 km to Venus, the bright spot in the lower center.

Not bad for your standard Mark I eyeball! Of course, 30 minutes after this it was dark enough to start seeing the stars, which are much farther away. And if we had dark skies (I’m in LA – we don’t) we could see the Andromeda Galaxy…

It’s a big Universe. Go take a look!

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February 2, 2023 · 23:26

Double Rings Around The Moon

I’ve seen & shared photos of a 22º ring or halo around the moon, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a double ring.

The outer ring is the 22º ring, and I can’t find any reference at all anywhere to a double ring around the moon, so this might just be an artifact of some kind.

The moon is almost full (95% illuminated) and was nearly overhead, if that has anything to do with it.

Now I’m curious. Does it look like an actual inner ring to anyone else? Or is it just a circular area of glare from the bright moon off of the clouds, where the ring is like a rainbow, with the moonlight being refracted off of ice crystals to give the 22º arc?

I guess I should have taken that upper division physics class on optics!

 

 

 

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February 1, 2023 · 23:24

Two Planets (OK, Well, Three)

From the backyard tonight, a bit of sunset, two bright planets high in the western sky.

Jupiter up high, just under the gap in the tree branches, Venus down low, just above the chimney.

A little better look.

From over the garage as it got darker.

Of course, from where we live, if you wait long enough, you’ll get an Identified Flying Object.

(Image from FlightRadar24)

In this case, identified as FedEx flight 1623 on final approach to Burbank Runway 8 from Portland.

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January 25, 2023 · 23:57

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) – FOUND!

It’s really late, I’m really short on time, but the short version is that being stubborn paid off tonight. The maps and information from TheSkyLive.com helped a ton.

Shooting blind, bracketing the framing, I finally identified that I was aiming too high on the first two sets of photos, so I went back out for a third. Do you see the fuzzy, faint, green dot? That’s the comet.

Here’s a portion of the map from TheSkyLive.com that matches what you’re seeing.

If I shoot short pictures (5 seconds) I don’t get as much washed out sky from the light pollution. But the comet is really faint and diffuse.

If I shoot longer pictures (13 seconds) I get a ton of light pollution washing everything out – but you can almost sort of start to see some of the tail. Maybe.

Here’s the frame from TheSkyLive.com that matches those two photos.

The other problem, as seen from this final frame from TheSkyLive.com, is that we’re close to the horizon, so even if the sky were clear of haze (it’s not) and/or light pollution (it’s really, REALLY not!) we would still be looking through a lot of air. So, three strikes.

But I FOUND IT ANYWAY!

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January 24, 2023 · 23:45

Comet C/2002 E3 (ZTF)

You might have heard about the “green” comet. It’s been lurking around in the Corona Borealis constellation for a while and is now moving over between the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, headed toward Casseopeia. All of those are fairly bright constellations near the north celestial pole, so in theory the comet should be easy-ish to find.

It’s just now growing to be bright enough to be visible to the naked eye – if you’re in a dark location with no light pollution and a cloud-free, haze-free sky. “If” carries a lot of weight in that sentence. The Los Angeles suburbs and the infamous San Fernando Valley have none of those things.

Which is why I’m using binoculars, which in theory at this point should make the comet easily visible – if I’m looking in the right place.

So I’m using a map – this one from TheSkyLive.com is really good. Just make sure you have it set for the correct time and location.

For the past four nights I’ve looked, but haven’t seen it yet. On the other hand, to our north it’s been hazy as all get out, some times tough to even seen the bright stars of The Big Dipper, even with binoculars. With a faint, diffuse comet being that much harder to see, I’m not surprised.

But tonight is much more clear, so I’m going to go back out. We’ll see what we’ll see.

Comet ZTF will be getting more bright and rising higher in the sky for Northern Hemisphere viewers over the next several weeks. If you’re up late, like near midnight, or at least after 22:00, go take a look!

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