Category Archives: Astronomy

October 31, 2017 · 23:05

Halloween 2017

When possible we celebrate Halloween by bringing out the telescopes and binoculars and throwing a star party on the front sidewalk while handing out candy. It has on occasion been spectacular.

After a year or two in which there wasn’t a lot of easy stuff to see from the bright, light polluted city, tonight was going to be great! The quarter moon was high and a trivially easy target. Saturn was up in the west and by the time it set Jupiter would be up in the east. Easy peasy.

Not tonight. The weather gods hate us.

Did anyone see the World Series Game Six from Dodger Stadium, which is about twenty miles from here as the crow flies? Drizzle, clouds, occasional light rain? Most of the actual rain missed us, but the clouds had us totally socked in.

The neighborhood knows us and we got asked all night about the telescopes. Sorry, I don’t have a radio telescope. If we have to stick to the optical wavelengths, tonight it was nothing but listening to the Dodgers game and handing out candy.

Also, in an hour NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starts. As much as I enjoyed participating in past years (just search this site for “NaNoWriMo”), just as I was forced to admit last year, there’s no way this year that I have the time to even think about participating.

Not surprisingly to me, having participated in both activities, NaNoWriMo reminds me a LOT of running a marathon. Just as I am melencholy watching the LA Marathon every year when I’m not running (which is most of them these days – I ran in 2011 and 2012, trained but didn’t fun in 2013 and 2014) I will no doubt be wishing that I was writing every day in November. The reality of my schedule and multiple other commitments is little consolation.

As noted previously, being a responsilbe adult can suck.

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September 14, 2017 · 23:37

For Cassini

Tough night. As they say, let’s not be sad because she’s leaving us, let’s be joyful because of all she showed us and taught us.

And when you’ve sworn that you’re going to put on your big boy pants and make it through the vigil, you get this thread:

Then of course you have to watch the Cassini “Grand Finale” video:

Tomorrow, maybe it would be a good thing to start working a little harder to try to figure out how to get the powers that be in Washington to fund the next mission to Saturn. Maybe a Titan explorer, a boat to sail those methane seas or a balloon to soar over those petrocarbon pinnacles. Or an Enceladus orbiter to taste the plumes coming out of the polar tiger stripes.

Or both.

But for tonight, hail and farewell Cassini. You will always be Queen of the ringed planet in our hearts.

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Filed under Astronomy, Music, Space

August 22, 2017 · 23:18

Home Again, Home Again

Long, long day, lots of (uneventful) travel. Up late, late last night packing and being CLOBBERED by some freakishly HUGE thunderstorms in the KC area. Up early, early this morning to get everyone off to the airport. Then home, unpacking, and trying to get a grip on where I’m at with all of that work and hangar stuff that I have to dive back into.

I’ve had just enough time to glance at the first of the photos from the DSLR with the big lens on it. Needless to say, compared to the stunning and gorgeous pictures that you can see online from a zillion people who had clear skies, mine don’t compare. On the other hand, pulling them up on the desktop, it’s surprising what I did manage to capture, even through the clouds. I’m seeing some of the corona, as well as some pink and reds from prominences around the limb. It’s blurry, but it’s there.

I think the best representation that I captured of what we saw will be in the videos, which I haven’t touched yet. I may have to start my own YouTube channel in order to upload the full resolution versions.

Meanwhile, it turns out that NASA had a pro film crew just a couple of miles away from where we were. This footage was shot by them in Beatrice, Nebraska. We were about five miles outside of Beatrice and this is pretty much what we saw with our eyes. They say they had 10,000 people there – we had maybe 200 to 250 at the gas station and country store where we made our stand. But the excitement and joy and noise from the crowd was the same, as was the movement of the clouds that you see in front of the eclipsed sun, preventing us from getting a super clear view, yet allowing us to see what we came to see and be awestruck by it.

Sleep.

Work.

Hangar.

Process video.

Still flashing back to the experience and still in awe.

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August 21, 2017 · 21:31

TOTALITY!!

Much more, of course, after I get home and have a chance to download the pictures from the DSLRs and the video from four different cameras. But for now, let’s say that it was an exciting and wonderful day with a fair amount of adrenaline expended.

We woke up to clouds.

By the time we hit the road, there were thunderheads starting to build.

We were heading to NE Kansas (the Sabetha area) or SE Nebraska (Humboldt or Pawnee City).

By the time we got to St. Joseph, it was raining. At times raining hard. Once out of St. Joseph and across the river into Kansas, we saw a bit of a rainbow. The good news is that a rainbow is a hopeful sign? The bad news is that in practical terms, you only get rainbows with rain, which means clouds.

We stopped in Hiawatha, Kansas to look at the maps and search for guidance. It basically looked bad and/or worse with a wide line of storms and clouds stretching from Tulsa to Minneapolis. Our only hope was to try to get to the far side of it to the west. We had about three hours before totality and decided to go for it, heading toward Beatrice, Nebraska.

A few miles shy of Beatrice, it was looking worse ahead of us, but maybe clearing just a touch behind us. We looked for a way to head south and ended up between Beatrice and Filley, Nebraska. With time running short, only a bit over an hour to totality, we made our stand.

Note the video cameras on the liftgate and on the luggage rack, as well as the two cameras on tripods. This was about thirty minutes before totality and we could all clearly see the partial phases. Everyone had our eclipse glasses and it was just amazing to see the moon moving across in front of the sun. Astonishing.

And in the last five minutes, the clouds got thicker again.

Totality!

We got lucky in that the clouds stayed thin enough to see all of totality. We couldn’t see all of the corona and there was no way to see any other stars or planets, which we would expect to see easily with a clear sky.

But we all did see totality, the full 2:38.4. We ended up less than a mile off of the center line.

How lucky were we? Less than ten minutes after totality ended, the sun was totally obscured. We saw almost nothing of the partial phases following totality.

Some days it’s better to be lucky than good. Today we were both.

How is totality? Almost beyond description. It truly is an astonishing, bizarre, beautiful, and moving experience.

I was wearing a head-mounted GoPro – it will be interesting to see how much actual squeeing and burbling I did.

A quick glance at the photos on the cameras shows that, while there aren’t THOUSANDS of pictures that will just awe and amaze you, there are probably one or two that don’t completely suck.

I’ll get back to you when I get home and have a bit of time to process, both my thoughts and my photos.

Final thought – if you EVER have an opportunity to see a total solar eclipse live and in person, TAKE IT! Find a way to make it happen, accept no excuses.

 

 

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August 20, 2017 · 20:22

One Day Out & Counting

Actually, about fifteen hours. Totality hits this area about 13:08 CDT.

Forecast for everything along the path of totality from Nebraska to Nashville is summer so-so, filled with convective activity & clouds popping up as the humid summer air heats up. There’s another significant thunderstorm event in the Kansas City area forecast for late tomorrow night and Tuesday morning, but for tomorrow afternoon it’s hit & miss, 30% to 50%+ cloud cover. The best clear spots are in central Tennessee and up in Idaho, both a dozen hours away by car even if there weren’t going to be 10,000,000 people trying to cram into those spots.

It should be a bit better than here if we travel toward NE Kansas and SE Nebraska, so we’ll be headed that way and hoping for the best. We’ll stay off the interstate highways and within the path of totality. (“It’s an adventure!”)

My makeshift solar filter for the big lens is set.

This is more or less the same setup I used a few years back for the Transit of Venus.

I took this picture at about 13:15 this afternoon, the same time that I’ll be taking them tomorrow.  That little solar filter is not optically flat by any means, but I was pleased to see that even with a simple rig like this the photo actually has enough detail to see the large row of sunspots along the equator, right in the middle of the image.

To check and make sure it’s not just a flaw in the cheesy $1 solar filter, I checked to see what the pros saw on the sun at the same time.

Photo: NASA Solar & Heliospheric Observatory

They have more detail – I have more day-glo orange duct tape.

So, off adventuring we go, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning. Wish us luck!

Tonight, the sunset from here was definitely above average. I hope it’s a good sign.

One day out and counting…

 

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August 19, 2017 · 21:48

Two Days Out & Counting

Tomorrow we attempt to divine the future from weather maps and scientific models of cloud cover.

Today we enjoyed Kansas City, with a visit to the wonderful World War I Museum…


…and a Royals game at Kauffman Stadium.


Look at that “clear and a million” sky! All day long!

Tomorrow it starts to go to hell (i.e., return to normal, partially to mostly cloudy, muggy, hot, convective, pop-up thunderstorms and fronts) and stays that way for the next several days.

As we knew going into this, Monday’s results are going to need a little bit of luck.

Two days out and counting…

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August 18, 2017 · 22:23

Three Days Out & Counting

This would be fantastic weather on Monday:


This, not so much, although very pretty:


This was a very cool place to visit, even worth the 3.5 hour drive each way from Kansas City:


Much more about it, of course, when I’ve got a few minutes to breathe. Which won’t be this weekend, I expect.

Interesting to note that even in Hutchison, KS, over 200 miles from Monday’s path of totality, and every ten to fifteen miles all the way there and back on the interstate highways, were electronic signs (the kind used in LA to warn of a freeway accident, closure, or Amber Alert) flashing, “Solar eclipse August 21st – Expect additional traffic.”

I’m not surprised to see that here, in or near the path of totality. But 200 miles away??!

Three days out and counting…

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August 17, 2017 · 22:03

Four Days Out & Counting

Today we traveled, tonight we’re in Kansas City. It’s been a long day, despite the fact that the flights went as smoothly as any we’ve had in years. Even the baby we sat next to on the Las Vegas to Kansas City route was quiet and well-behaved.

On the one hand I was surprised to see that the eclipse doesn’t seem to be a huge deal here at first glance. The woman who checked us into the hotel barely seemed to know what we were talking about when she asked the obligatory, “So, what brings you to town?” question. The manager at the restaurant knew about it and was thinking of maybe going outside to watch it (they’re in the path of totality, but only for about twenty seconds) but maybe not.

Gobsmacked!

On the other hand, I could hear other people on the plane talking about it and trying to get people interested and give them some good advice about watching it. So there are signs that my people are starting to invade the region.

Four days out and counting…

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August 16, 2017 · 23:11

Five Days Out & Counting

There’s an important point that I would like to make about my first eclipse chase. I think some might think that I’ve forgotten it, or never learned it to begin with, but I want to assure you that I haven’t and I did.

This is going to be fun! This is going to be amazing! This is going to be an adventure!

And that’s true even if we run into some incredibly bad luck and despite all of the planning and odds we end up getting completely clouded out.

In addition, the fact that I’m taking along so much gear does not mean that I’m obsessed beyond everything else with getting pictures and video, leaving me after the fact having not actually seen it. That’s not going to happen.

So, to the first point, I understand that things could go wonky on us and we end up not seeing the eclipse in all of its glory. It’s conceivable (although unlikely) that we could end up in a spot where it’s raining so hard and in a thunderstorm so violent and dense that we don’t even see it get dark(er) during totality. It’s conceivable.

That will not make this trip a failure.

Yes, I’ve got a plan “A” and “B” and “C” and probably at least a plan “M” or “N.” That’s part of the adventure for me, part of the experience. But come next Monday, I’m not going to get pissed off if Plans “A,” “B,” and “C” all collapse and I end up “settling” for seeing only a few seconds of totality instead of 2:38. I’m not going to mope if I’m clouded out and end up getting to only see it get dark under the clouds.

That will not make this trip a failure.

What would make the trip a failure is not taking the trip. What would make the trip a failure would be being so afraid of failure that I didn’t bother to go.

As for all of that gear, about 90% of it is set up to have me hit a button about five minutes before totality and then sit back and enjoy the show. (Assuming I’m not sprinting through a corn field with 50 pounds of gear because our side of the corn field just got a cloud hovering over it but a quarter mile away it’s perfectly sunny. Let’s not be stupid about this, okay?) Once the show starts, yes, I’ll have a camera in my hands, and yes, I’ll check once or twice to make sure that the other stuff is still running, but a good chunk of my time will be spent just looking around, soaking it all in, making sure that on my death bed I’ll be able to remember it all and put myself right back there in that moment.

It’s going to be an adventure!

It’s going to be amazing!

It’s going to be FUN!

(Let the packing panic begin.)

Five days out and counting…

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August 15, 2017 · 23:24

Six Days Out & Counting

There are going to be a LOT of people “near” (for values of “near” up to 600 or 700 miles) the path of totality who are going to decide at the last minute (i.e., in the last day or two, or possibly next Monday morning) to head toward that black hole in the sky.

We’re not those people.

I’ve known about this eclipse for a couple of years and I’ve been actively planning for many months. We picked our target area (Missouri/Kansas) and got our hotel rooms, flights, and rental car months ago.

The joker will always be the weather. We’ll spend Sunday watching the forecasts. If we’re 100% sure it’s going to be “clear and million,” we’ll find something fun to do. In the much more likely event that things are more iffy, we’ll be looking at options. If the local weather absolutely is going to suck, we’ll pick a direction, northwest toward Nebraska or southeast toward Nashville, and make a run for it first thing on Monday morning.

Assuming the weather locally is acceptable, the plan is to get a close to the center line as possible, and thus get the longest duration of totality. Since we’re already in the area, an early run off into the hinterlands to find some small town with a school or shopping center or church parking lot will work. Then sit and wait for the glory.

Closer to the cities and closer to the interstates, it might turn into a circus. Some places will get flooded with over 100,000 people. (See first paragraph above.) They’re going to clog the roads, run out of gas, clean out every gas station and mini-mart in sight, overload and shut down the cell phone system, and generally cause a mess. This is why I want to be elsewhere, in position, sitting on my ass and enjoying a cold beverage as the eclipse starts.

If all else fails, especially if the weather is clear, our hotel near the airport is in the path of totality. It’s just not terribly close to the center line. If it’s clear, we can simply walk out into the parking lot or go down by the pool and see about 1:52 of totality. Maybe not the 2:38 that we’ll get fifteen miles away on the center line, but if that extra forty-six seconds of totality means eight hours of fighting traffic…

Six days out & counting…

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