Category Archives: Astronomy

May 8, 2017 · 23:32

Blue Sky, Pink Clouds, White Moon

The moon was two days shy of being full tonight, which has it rising above the house into a twilight blue sky.

Above was a layer of clouds turning pink in the sunset.

Behind me, out of the west, I could hear a big jet on the way into Burbank, swinging way around to the west over Ventura County before heading straight in to Runway 8.

As the clouds began to fade to grey, the UPS Cargo 757 lined up and vanished into the east.

In minutes, the pink and blue faded, leaving only the cold, white reflected light from the lunar surface.

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Filed under Astronomy, Flying, Photography, Weather

May 5, 2017 · 23:43

Whisp O’ Blue Moon

The first edges of a storm were moving in this afternoon, drifting through the bluest of blue skies and fighting with the quarter-full daytime moon.

Moments like this are why I love having a high-quality digital camera in my pocket just about 24/7. The fact that it can also be used as a supercomputer and a phone are just gravy.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Weather

May 2, 2017 · 23:17

Some Excellent ISS Passes Coming To SoCal This Week

…and I guarantee I won’t see a single one of them!


Magnitude -3.7? That’s like 747-on-final-approach bright!

72° peak above the horizon? Nice & high, trivially easy to spot!

Almost six minutes from horizon to horizon? SWEET!

Rising at 5:07 AM? My ass will be warm, comfy, and ASLEEP IN BED!

As Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limitations!”

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Filed under Astronomy, Space

March 30, 2017 · 23:07

Sunset + Airport + Moon + Contrail

That about sums it up!

 

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Filed under Astronomy, Flying, Photography

February 22, 2017 · 23:22

Sunset On Trappist-1e

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It’s only forty light-years away! I’m ready to go!!

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Filed under Art, Astronomy, Space

January 31, 2017 · 23:31

It Moved!

Again out to the roof of the office parking garage. Tonight I started to attract some attention. It’s not normal to see a guy out there with a couple of big cameras pointed at the moon!

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Look at that! Last night the moon was down there, but tonight it’s up there! (Well, relative to our sightline to Venus, but let’s not get carried away here.) It’s almost like the Earth, Moon, Venus, Sun, and Mars were all…moving.

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It was a bit darker when I went out tonight, so it’s easier to pick up Mars. It’s just above center here, with Venus on the bottom, the Moon, at the top, and the Sun somewhere way over to the left. Obvious to us, but not so to the ancients. We might have a slightly more accurate worldview than they did.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

January 30, 2017 · 22:52

Crescent Moon + Venus + Mars

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Last night was “clear and a million” and I had my alarm set incorrectly, so I missed most of the nice sunset with the thin crescent moon. Not tonight, even if it does mean taking a quick break from the office and going out to the parking garage roof.

But where’s the moon?

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There it is! Veiled by all of those high, thin clouds.

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Not bad for a handheld shot, no tripod.

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Look out! I didn’t know Southwest Airlines had regularly schedule service to the Moon!

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Coming back out about a half-hour later when it was suitably dark, I found that most of the overcast had disappeared, allowing Venus to appear!

img_0370_smallA little bit of Earthshine lighting up the dark parts of the moon.

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Mars was suposed to be to the upper left of Venus from this perspective. Is it there? Click on the image to see it full-sized and take a look.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

January 26, 2017 · 23:23

Nice Planet

…be a pity of something happened to it. Heh, heh, heh

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That’s Venus up there in the sky above a lovely sunset. The palm trees are purple because the hotel thought that would look cool while we were out on the seaside patio for cocktail hour at this conference.

The only thing cool was the weather – about 51°F with a stiff breeze. I know, all of my Vermont and Maine friends think that’s woosie as hell – and they’re correct. It was still really cold out there if you’re dressed for Southern California weather and get this instead.

FYI, pictures taken with my iPhone. They’re getting pretty stinking good these days.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Travel

January 6, 2017 · 21:56

Last Light

Well, it’s almost the last light for this year’s Christmas light display. They may be on tomorrow & I might not be able to actually get them down on Sunday if the weather sucks, but if nothing else I’ll pull the plug on Sunday.

This was the first (almost) clear night in a couple of weeks, so I took the opportunity to grab a few last photos with the moon and a few lights together.

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Filed under Astronomy, Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Photography

December 19, 2016 · 22:32

Reality Check

This image from Saturn was released by NASA and JPL today. It shows the moon Mimas 28,000 miles beyond the outer rings of Saturn and 114,000 miles from the Cassini spacecraft.

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

You can read more at the JPL/NASA website here.

This image is spectacular, to say the least, and it has made its round on various websites today. On many of the sites I visited, the comments very quickly were spotted with (or deluged with) ignorant rantings about how the image was “obviously” fake.

Imagine that. A significant percentage of the population, and a particularly vocal percentage at that, consider this image and those like it to be “fake news.”

Meanwhile, a significant percentage of the population is absolutely convinced that articles about things like “pizzagate” are 100% factual, accurate, and true.

Imagine that. A significant percentage of the population, and a particularly vocal percentage at that, think it’s been proven to be true that Hillary Clinton and some secret international cabal are running a pedophilia and child smuggling ring out of the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the stomach to do it, but I wonder if anyone has waded through the ignorance, hatred, filth, and outright freakin’ stupidity on these people’s web pages, Facebook posts, and Twitter rants to see how much cross correlation there is between the two groups. Maybe someone far smarter than me could write a ‘bot or app that could do the searching based on certain keywords so that no rational human would have to be exposed to that possibly fatal level of batshit crazy.

My gut feeling is that the correlation is disturbingly high.

This could be one of reasons we’ve got the problems we have.

Just guessing.

 

 

 

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Filed under Astronomy, Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!, Space