My head is either too full or too empty tonight. Or both. Simultaneously.
It’s odd, and not necessarily comfortable. “Comfortable” might be overrated.
Or not.
Blow this one up. Just look at it. I barely remember taking it, but I’m finding that I really, REALLY like it.
The gradient. The silhouttes. The composition.
Blind squirrel. Broken clock. Paul’s photography.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Travel
Look at this gorgeous sunset from San Antonio tonight!
It’s not quite “clear and a million,” but it would do for tomorrow.
Totality in Kerrville starts at 13:32 CDT. There’s mow a 77% chance of “clouds” then, but that could mean something like this (which would be FINE) to heavy, thick, low rain clouds (which would NOT be).
It will be what it will be. But if any of the gods are listening and could deign to cut us some slack, we’ll take it.
“Some days it’s better to be lucky than good!” I’ve been good – now I’ll graciously accept some good luck.
Clear skies, eclipse buckaroos!!
And the sprint is on!
Okay, it started days ago, but we’re now less than seven days out from the eclipse and las than thirty-six hours from when I’m supposed to hit the road, so I guess it’s more accurate to say, “The panic is on!”
Which is not to say that a few minutes couldn’t be spared to watch tonight’s sunset launch out of Vandenberg of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Look closely and you can see a bright dot that’s Jupiter, just to the left of the palm tree tops. This exhaust plume was drifting in the high altitude, sunset skies as I was waiting to hear the sonic boom about nine minutes after launch, a couple minutes after the second stage had disappeared over the southern horizon. That sonic boom was very noticeable – not like it was going to shatter windows, but it was a pretty good “thump.”
You might be able to hear it just a few seconds before the end of this video, just before I said, “There it is!”
Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets
When I went out to get the Sunday morning groceries and pick up breakfast it was clear as a bell. I didn’t even take a picture (imagine that!) because it was just…blue. Lots and lots of blue.
15:54 – I was squirreled away in my office for several hours after that until all of a sudden the cable signal on all channel got interrupted with one of those emergency weather alerts for a dangerous thunderstorm with potential hail, wind, lightning, and local flooding. It was off in the San Gabriel Valley, sixty miles to our east, but a quick check of the radar showed that the one sparking the alert was just the worst of four or five thunderstorm cells drifting about, and one of them was close to us.
16:59 – One of the cells was very close to Dodger Stadium and Downtown LA, with the Angels playing the Dodgers in the first of the Freeway Series spring training games. Here I could hear occasional thunder and there were a couple of quick, moderate showers, but no real rain – yet.
17:37 – Now it’s raining, and raining pretty good. More thunder, but out in the front yard, looking west, there’s the sun shining through the broken edge of the the thunderstorm cell. It’s quite the spectacle with the heavy rain being backlit by the bright Sun. I ran out to the back yard to see if we might get a spectacular rainbow, but we struck out on that. A couple of miles away there were reports of medium-sized hail and heavier showers, but we just got grazed by the edge of the cell.
19:11 – We get more alerts about “our” thunderstorm cell being a danger to mariners out over Santa Monica Bay to our south where it’s drifted, but off to the north we’ve just got a lot of broken clouds and a highly unstable atmosphere. This however is great for getting a spectacular sunset. With more rain directly west of us, the normal view we have of the pink and golden clouds behind the grove of silhouetted palm trees is grey and gloomy and dark, but looking to the side from the back yard it’s bright and colorful.
19:14 – Behind us to the east, peeking in and out of all of the broken clouds and scattered thunderstorm cells, the 99.9% full moon is rising. Fourteen days to the eclipse. Ready or not…
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
When a rocket launches it leaves behind it a trail of exhaust. From the rocket itself there’s a V-shaped plume of exhaust that grows bigger and wider as the rocket ascends and the air pressure drops. This can sometimes be tough to see during daylight unless you’re close to the launch site. At night it’s much easier to see the rocket and V-shaped plume since the rocket is so bright, but you often can’t see the long plume behind it because there’s nothing illuminating it.
But there’s a sweet spot, for a little while after sunset (or before sunrise, but getting up that early? who needs that sort of negativity in their lives?!) when it’s dark enough overhead to see the rocket, but the Sun’s still shining over the horizon to illuminate the plume…
I didn’t figure it would matter at all. We again had several pop-up thunderstorms that weren’t in the forecast at all (what IS up with that?) and late this afternoon we were getting light showers and we weren’t watching anything in the sky except the bottoms of some thick, black clouds.
But I checked again just before the SpaceX launch, and it was surprisingly clear. I kicked the “LIVE!” button in Facebook.
It was AMAZING!!
The plume had gone from horizon to (almost) horizon (there’s a tree there to the southeast) and the lighting and timing were perfect.
In the video you can see the first stage come up from behind the mountains (0:56), shut down and separate from the upper stage (1:42), the second stage light (1:49), the first stage falling behind with occasional white flashes from the cold nitrogen gas thrusters it uses for maneurvering (2:37 & 2:39), and the two fairing halves separating and falling away (2:46). If you listen carefully (or are using headphones) you can hear neighbors from a couple of spots through the neighborhood hooting & hollering.
Even fifteen minutes after the launch, the plume was still illuminated as the upper level winds twisted and dissapated the exahust, still lit from the Sun far over the western horizon.
Online on social media you’ll see videos and pictures from all up and down the California coast, from Pismo Beach to San Diego, down into Baja, and inland in as far as Palm Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas. There’s even one picture from a guy somewhere over the Rockies at 34,000 feet, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
It was quite the show!
Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets, Video
I had another post and pictures all set up and ready to go. Then the sun set.
Holy freakin’ guacamole, Batman!
If you’re lucky you might get one or two sunsets a year in this part of the world that are this colorful, saturated, vibrant, and amazing.
Tonight was that night. Complete with a thin, fingernail of a three-day old crescent moon in the upper left.
Neighbors were driving by and stopping to stare with us. And why not? If you see this going on and you don’t notice or don’t care, please check for a pulse!
This spectacular display went on for over ten minutes. I even had time to shoot some panoramas.
While the purples started to fade to black up high, the reds and oranges near the horizon just got brighter and more vibrant.
All things are transient, none so much as a sunset. The planet’s just going to keep on spinning, which in the big picture is probably a good thing.
One last gasp, then the stars started popping out. Jupiter came out just above the wires, over at the left edge of the picture. Orion is high up to the left, the easiest constellation to pick out. The Plieades cluster is close to the Moon. Somewhere out there is that comet I talked about yesterday.
Spectacular!
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Sunsets
Oh, look what popped up in the sunset skies, two days past new moon!
Just a thumbnail, hanging up there with the lit sliver pointing the way toward the Sun.
After it got a little bit darker, Jupiter’s bright off to the left. There’s a new comet that might be visible after dark over to the right, about where the top of that tall tree is. But you’ll need a dark sky to see it, and binoculars will help.
I went out before it all set, had my good binoculars, but struck out on the comet. I found the guide stars that the finder chart used to point out its location and it should have been right there – but I couldn’t see a thing. The surface brightness of the comet is probably much lower than the background illumination of all of LA’s light pollution combined with Ventura County’s coastal haze.
But in twenty-six days? By that time, assuming the comet hasn’t faded out of sight, it will have moved over to the other side of Jupiter and during that 4:24 of eclipse, it should be clearly visible, along with Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and the eclipsed Sun. Will I actually be able to see it?
In 26 days, 9 hours, and 13 minutes we’ll find out!
This one is actually from a week or so ago – today was clear and “boring” as colors and clouds go.
This one didn’t start with a lot of color, but the clouds and definition in the structures was exceptional.
As always, the silhouetted palm trees were splendid.
We finally got to see a little bit of color.
And more shadows of cloud on cloud. So freakin’ gorgeous. Tell me, how often do you look for something like this in your busy life? If it’s happening, how often do you spend ten minutes just watching? If the answer to either question is “never,” you might need to re-evaluate your life choices.
We’re looking hard a houses up in the high desert someplace. The sunsets and sunrises there can be even more spectacular (see these, for example), but I hope I can find a place with a couple of palm trees to add some character to that horizon while the sky’s doing tricks.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
I was fortunate this evening to get a quick heads up from a good friend that the sunset going on outside at the moment was “epic.”
She wasn’t wrong! It had been vascillating between damp, showers, rain, and downpours all day, but being back in “damp” mode (it’s raining again now) meant that some sunlight was getting through.
Then, about two minutes later, these spectral vapors just materialized out of thin air.
The air was saturated with moisture, cool, and apparently right on the edge of condensation into clouds.
Some small eddy or disturbance, probably with a breeze coming up the canyon and getting some lift, cooling and spinning just a bit, caused these to puff into visibility.
A stray late sunset, pink and orange ray of sunlight found a hole and poked through like a spotlight, catching them against the dark background of the thicker, unlit clouds off in the distance.
Knowing what causes it doesn’t make it any less spectacular. (But all of those stupid wires!)
So I ran down the hill to the spot where I watch SpaceX launches out of Vandenberg, free from wires. Those couple of minutes cost me in terms of less color and sunlight, but the two wraiths were still lit.
Barely! Between the sunlight fading and the disturbance that had caused them dying out, they were vanishing, the visible moisture evaporating and being absorbed back into the air as equilibrium with the surrounding local atmosphere was reestablished.
And then it was gone. Almost – I caught just the slightest trace of color to the left of that palm tree crown. (And then I had to climb back up that hill to get home!)
EPIC! Indeed.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
SpaceX has gone from a handful of launches per year to just under 100 launches in 2023. They plan to have well over that this year, with even more next year. While most of those launches are out of Florida where they have a couple of launch pads and two landing zones and two drone ships for recovery of the first stages, the launch cadence out of Vanednberg up the coast from us is going up as well.
Last year there were 28 launches out of Vandenberg by my count. For 2024 there are plans to have 50+, or basically one a week. Unless it’s cloudy (which happens, and they’ll launch anyway in many of those cases) I can easily see any night launch. The daytime launches are a little tougher to see from this far away.
The problem is that the times will change as launch windows come and go. With the Starlink launches there are generally multiple launch windows in a day, so if something isn’t quite right (the vehicle, the weather at the launch site, the weather at the landing site, etc) they can wait an hour or so and then try again.
Yesterday the first launch opportunity was just after sunset and would have given a spectacular “jellyfish” effect as the exhaust plume high up in the atmosphere was illuminated by the Sun far over the horizon while we were all watching from darkness. Unfortunately, that window got passed up.
The good news is that the launch went off about three hours later, and it was magnificent to watch.
The bad news was that I had to lug the tripod & camera gear back up the hill from the “good” viewing spot about halfway down. That location lets me have a much more clear view of the western horizon, without the palm trees across the street from our house being in the way. On the other hand, I did get to see a great sunset!
There will be a lot more opportunities this year to get a sunset jellyfish launch. I’ll be ready!
Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 