Category Archives: Astronomy

October 21, 2025 · 22:18

Photographing Comet Lemmon – Strike Two

I hauled my binoculars, two tripods, three cameras, and four lenses over a block or two to the dark area where the empty lots in our subdivision are. Few lights, which is good. Scattered clouds, which is bad.

If you click on the image to blow it up, on the right you’ll see the three stars that make up the handle of the Big Dipper. Follow that arch to about just over the right-hand street light in the distance. Right about where that cloud is. That’s where Comet Lemmon C/2025 should be. I’m not seeing it.

Off to the south, there were clouds over Cajon Pass, lit up by the traffic coming up I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The predicted peak brightness for Comet Lemmon is about now and in the next day or two. From here out it should be fading slowly. I’ll look for another of those “clear and a bazillion” days and see if we get lucky.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

October 20, 2025 · 23:59

No Joy Photographing Comet Lemmon

Well, extremely limited joy at best. Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) is in the evening sky right now, 60-90 minutes after sunset, in between the “handle” of the Big Dipper (easy to find in the northwest) and Arcturus (the brightest, orange-tinted star just above the horizon in the west). I could spot the coma (head) with binoculars, just a grey, fuzzy puffball, but no tail. I tried to photograph it both with my iPhone and with the good Canon DSLRs using both the wide-angle “light bucket” lens and the “regular” 50 mm lens. In all of the longer exposure photos there’s a fair amount of light from the porch lights at the neighbors’ houses. I can sorta see a fuzzy dot where the comet should be, but not enough to be 100% sure that it’s it. Tomorrow I’ll take the cameras out to some empty land near our house, away from all of the house lights, and see if that helps.

Meanwhile, the atmposphere today was PERFECT for contrails.

The sunset lighting helped!

I do wonder what causes the sawtooth pattern that’s seen so often. Is that an atmospheric effect, or something caused by some sort of pulsing in the engines?

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October 6, 2025 · 23:16

This Happens Every Day

It just seems a lot more obvious up here in the desert.

Good thing too, given the insane times we’re living in on all levels. Seeing this at 6:00 AM can give you a shot of hope, and that full moon rising at 6:00 PM isn’t half bad either. It’s all that shit in between that’s gotten to be a bit much.

That really bright object shining through the plantation shutters in the upper right? That’s Venus.

Brilliant!

Stunning!

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Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets

October 4, 2025 · 23:12

Star Party

The Long Suffering Wife had seen some sort of notice about a local event, a “star party” at the Victor Valley Museum, put on by the High Desert Astronomical Society (HiDAS). In an effort start exploring our new community and meeting folks, off we went!

Click on it to blow it up – the bright “star” to the lower left of the Moon is Saturn. Those two objects were the primary focus of the various dozen or so telescopes set up, although a couple were also showing us globular clusters and nebulae.

I wanted to get information on HiDAS. I hope it will give me additional opportunities to get out of the house a couple times a month and to get help from more experienced amateur astronomers for upgrading my telescopes and astrophotography equipment. As well as somewhere in the future have opportunities to use the club telescopes and viewing site out in nearby truly “dark sky” conditions.

A fun evening!

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October 2, 2025 · 22:38

Lurking

Playing with the iPhone. Go to the darkest part of the yard, set it face up on a chair so it’s stable, set it for the longest exposure it will do (not that long) and then lurk to see what I get.

And in the quarter moonlight & glow of the neighbors’ backyard lights, wearing a dark T-shirt, I turn into a disembodied head, hovering off on the side of the frame, floating among the ever-so-slightly trailed and blurry stars.

It’s a look.

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Filed under Astronomy, Paul, Photography

September 29, 2025 · 23:32

Moon & Maple

What a lovely evening it was. Hanging in there… I hope you’re doing the same (at least) or better!

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September 14, 2025 · 23:23

The Back Wall As A Tripod

I still haven’t found all of my tripods out the the PODS following the move, but with the almost full Moon near the horizon a couple of days ago and the back wall there to set the lens on (and very, very short exposure times for the very, very bright moon), the results didn’t suck.

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September 6, 2025 · 23:40

Proof Of Life – September 06th

Damn, that was a LOT of lifting and moving and unloading and unpacking and I am SOOOOOO over all of this…

It’s a marathon – good thing I’ve run a few and trained for them. One foot in front of another…

Meanwhile, a 99% full Moon rising over the mountains looks spectacular. We know that I love sunsets, and the sunrises here aren’t bad at all. I guess we can add moonrises to that list.

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September 5, 2025 · 23:38

Big Things Over The Horizon

It was a nice day here (aside from the small brush fire that they stomped on pretty quickly with a half dozen aircraft and kept to about 33 acres) but out in the desert late in the day there were a couple of odd, big, convective cells building up.

This was off to the northeast, up toward Barstow. Probably at least 40 or 50 miles away, but the cloud tops at 15,000 to 20,000 are impressive.

When we got past sunset here but the cloud tops were still lit, it got better.

There was another big group of cells down toward Palm Springs.

This extremely large, round object was also seen coming up, moving in its orbit toward a full lunar eclipse on Sunday (which we won’t see at all here – enjoy it in Asia, India, Africa, and Australia!).

Once everything on the ground started turning pink, it had risen above the mountains, clouds, and haze to become a bright, white beacon.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

September 2, 2025 · 23:51

Four Seconds Of A Falcon 9 Launch

Surprisingly (I thought the desert was more dry) we had some clouds, a bit of rain, a few lightning bolts, and even a brief power outage. (When this sort of thing happened about ten days ago we never lost power even though there was an outage all over town – I figured our solar power panels had kept us online. Maybe? Maybe today there was heavy enough cloud cover so that the solar system wasn’t producing enough to cover us? I don’t know. It’s yet another learning curve.)

That was all well and good, but tonight SpaceX was launching another Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg. Having clouds covering a big chunk of the sky to the west is a problem.

Being as far away from the coast & launch as we are, the rocket never gets very high above the horizon to begin with. With clouds out there, I was lucky to see the rocket pop out through a hole in the overcast for three or four seconds just before MECO, at which point it went behind all of those clouds in the upper left and was never seen again. (The launch was perfectly fine and successful, I just didn’t see any more of it.)

Afterward, the quarter moon behind the clouds looked spooky and beautiful.

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