I think it was full moon when I caught this – might have been a day before or a day after, but close enough for government work.
Not the closest or the biggest, or the furthest away or the smallest, just the one that comes 28 days after the last one, so no headlines, no clickbait, no spam about it.
Sometimes you get lucky playing around with the iPhone settings and you get a decent picture. It’s better to be lucky than good!
That’s pretty!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
Bright moon, full-ish. Might be tonight, might have been last night. Whatever, close enough for government work.
Odd trail of cloud covering it.
The clouds and the moon are 250,000 miles apart, I think it’s just a coincidental alignment. I like to keep an eye open for such things. And then share them.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Weather
Blanc (the neighbor’s dog) had been howling earlier in the day while I was petting him over the fence, so I reminded him that the “pink” (so named because of the flowers and cherry blossoms blooming at this time of year) new moon was rising tonight, and I promised to come back out later and howl at the rising moon with him.
I came out just as the full moon was peeking over the horizon, went over to the fence, petted Blanc some more, and started howling. Blanc was confused and started barking instead of howling. His owner came out and yelled at him to stop barking and I had to explain that it was my fault for teaching Blanc to do bad things.
I wanted to get a picture of me, Blanc, and the rising full moon, but Blanc wouldn’t stay still long enough.
Two out of three ain’t bad, I guess.
Filed under Astronomy, Paul, Photography
It was clear but windy tonight, Orion and its surroundings were bright, and out in the back yard I had the tripod I have with the mount for my cell phone. Normally it’s in the front yard (for rocket launches or ISS passes) or the garage, but with the flooding and nonsense going on in the garage, it ended up in the back yard, right there for me to use.
Wide angle.
Normal.
3x zoom.
Nothing fancy, just point it in that direction (-ish) and use the three basic settings for photos on the iPhone 13.
These photos picked up a fair amount of nebulosity in the Orion Nebula (the middle “star” in the “sword”), and the wider angle shots also pick up Mars, Castor & Pollux in Gemini, and the Pleiades on the lower right.
The background sky is still way too blue, reflecing all of the lights from the city off of a touch of haze.
What I wouldn’t give for a deep, dark sky.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
The lunar eclipse is underweigh as we speak!
This was about an hour ago, and you can see that it was clear then – now we’re starting to get some clouds, just as totality starts.
Totality will last an hour or so, so I might still get some pictures. If you’re seeing this in the next few minutes and on this side of the planet, go outside and look!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
I think I liked this picture the best from tonight, something about the composition and positioning of the tree trunk.
That said, I like this one because you can clearly see Orion over on the left, Jupiter shining through the branches just to the right of center, and the Pleiades cluster in the lower right. That’s not a bad amount of detail for a handheld iPhone picture.
Overall tonight, the moonlit landscape and clear (and cold) sky was just amazing. If the back yard wasn’t a landscaping nightmare right now between the droughts and gopher holes all making it look like no-man’s land, I would have loved to have gotten a blanket or two and just laid out there looking for a while.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
It’s actually a decent-sized moon, but when it’s 250,000 miles away (give or take) and you’re using a wide-angle lens, it can appear to be quite tiny.
See it? Up there in all of the cloud layers (rain moving in for tomorrow and Thursday) and contrails?
Zoom in far enough and you can see that it’s a bit short of being a half-illuminated moon, but well beyond the crescent phase.
I still dream that some day, some how, I get a chance to go there. It could happen!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets
I had a thought for a picture, wasn’t sure how well it would work…
Not bad! Close to what I was hoping it would look like – tough to get both me and something dozens and hundreds and thousands of light years away in focus together, especially in low light with the lens wide open and a minimal depth of field. Perhaps I can lock the focus on the stars next time and I’ll just show up fuzzy.
Which, truth be told, is not an inaccurate representation of reality in multiple dimensions!
Filed under Astronomy, Paul, Photography
A dozen days ago I shared some pictures of the young, crescent moon and Venus, and in passing I said:
Not seen, but also there, is Neptune, just to the left of Venus. I might be able to pick it out as a pinpoint with my 8″ telescope (Venus and Saturn will show visible disks, Saturn’s rings would be clearly visible) and it might show some blue color, but the iPhone doesn’t have a chance.
Which, of course, led me straight down a rabbit hole of detailed star maps and pushing the pixels visible in a raw iPhone 13 image.
First of all, while this may have been the full-sized image:
…when you blow it way, way up and crop the area around Venus and those power lines, you get this (you probably have to click on these images to blow them up to full-screen size to see what I’m talking about):
And it’s pretty easy to see what I had referred to as a “quadralateral of four dimmer stars” (highlighted in the annotated image below):
After searching for some much more detailed and precise online star maps (courtesy of The Sky Live) and setting the parameters to match my photos, I had a MUCH better idea where Neptune truly was at the time I took the photos.
So, there’s Venus, and there’s that asterism of four dim stars, so Neptune should be right…THERE!
“…but the iPhone doesn’t have a chance.” Color me shocked, I wouldn’t have bet on that in a thousand years, but there it is!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
There were a bunch of weeks there in December and January where, if I was leaving the office about 17:45 and driving home, it was already pitch dark outside.
Yeah, I know what causes it, that whole “seasons,” and “axial tilt,” and “winter solstice” thing. Just sayin’, it was noticeably dark, early.
Tonight, leaving at 17:40 and driving west homeward, it really was noticeable that the sun was setting through the broken clouds, right in my eyes. The cyclic nature of that “axial tilt” thing had carried us past the solstice and we’re well on our way to the equinox next month.
The weather looks okay for the weekend, which will be nice for our Superb Owl party on Sunday, but there’s a lot more rain expected next week.
Good, we need it. I don’t want to get into another drought.
Filed under Astronomy, Critters, Photography, Sunsets, Weather
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 