Tonight I was at a very pleasant event for one of our business partners in Pasadena. It was held outdoors and I don’t know if anyone else noticed Venus bright as all getout in the western sunset sky, but I though it looked lovely up above the party lights strung overhead.
The tiny lens flares from all of the party lights in the lower 1/3 of the picture were a surprise!
Do you prefer it with or without all of the tiny lens flares?
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets
I came out into the living room just after sunset and the window in the front door was bright red.
It was so bright and so red that my first thought was that either there were emergency vehicles outside, a brush fire, or both. Which makes no sense with all of the rain we’ve had.
Instead, it was just another of THOSE sunsets. The amazing, fantastic, bright orange and red and pink kind.
As it faded , the colors covered less of the sky but seemed to get more intense near the horizon.
Some days you just need to be in the right place at the right time.
Welcome to April!
Filed under Photography, Sunsets
Hope springs eternal in the (not so) young amateur astronomer’s heart as he searches for five planets in the sky at once. Even if I can’t get a good photo, maybe I can at least see them?
Maybe Jupiter and Mercury can be seen through that hole in the oncoming storm front? Nope, they’re actually over to the far right, just to the right of the top of Castle Peak that you can just see in the bottom right corner. But at this point it was too bright, too close to sunset to see. Plus, you know, CLOUDS!
The clouds did have a little bit of iridescence, and it was clear overhead so I could see the quarter Moon, but the clouds were not only hiding dim Jupiter and Mercury but also obscuring my view of bright Venus and super dim Uranus up somewhere where that jet was passing by in the upper left.
I hope you had better hunting and clearer skies than I did!
All I saw was one cloudy planet, the one that I’m stuck to.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets
If you’re a pilot, you’ll be familiar with the term “scud running.” In more formal terms, it means trying to squeeze between low clouds (scud) and the ground or minimum altitude restrictions. (That “hard deck” they’re always talking about in “Top Gun?” It’s that.) One’s often flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) where you’re not necessarily talking to Air Traffic Control (ATC). One might not be rated for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). One might not want to be bothered with all of the paperwork and control and planning involved in IFR flight and want to stay in the “easier” VFR flight rules.
In more snarky terms, it means “maintaining visual contact with the ground while avoiding physical contact with it.” To be legal in most controlled airspace you need to be 500 feet away from the clouds and 1,200 feet above the ground (depending on what airspace you’re in) with three miles of visibility. But if you can get into Class G (uncontrolled) airspace it’s 500 feet from the clouds and one mile of visibility. So if you get down low and can squeeze between those hills and mountains and the ground and that lowering cloud deck…
This is dangerous. Often VERY dangerous. Legal? Probably. Sometimes. Maybe. -ish.
Lots of things can go very wrong very fast. There are more and more things like cell towers, power lines, wind turbine towers, and buildings out there to make something very hard and very bad to fly into. At such a low altitude, if anything goes wrong (like engine problems) you have very little room for error or maneuvering. Scud is often found near the edges of thunderstorms and that can mean downdrafts that just reach out and slap you out of the sky. The clouds can close in and leave you in IFR conditions, blind, close to the ground, and in a world of hurt.
Got the picture?
The same thing happens in life. You take a “small” chance and get away with it. You know better, but it’s convenient and you just need to bend the rules a little bit, not really break them. Then the next time it’s easier to do it again. And the next time you bend the rules just a little bit more. You keep getting away with it. Again, and again, and…
…and then things go pear-shaped and sideways and you’re seriously up the creek.
I think this is basically the overall story arc of “Breaking Bad.”
Admire the scud in the sunset. Avoid the scud running in a plane or in everyday life.
Just something to think about.
Filed under Flying, Photography, Sunsets, Weather
Breathing is good.
Not like, breathing as opposed to suffocating and dying. “Breathing” as in, take a couple of minutes, watch the sunset, let your shoulders relax, unclench your jaw, and try to somehow get that stupid old Pet Shop Boys song that you hate out of your head on 24/7 repeat.
You know. “Breathing.”
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Sunsets
A few clouds moving in from the next storm make a great, colorful sunset.
But if you get enough light for the wonderful colors and spectacular gradient from pink to black, then you can only see Venus, not Jupiter. It’s fading. (I know how it feels…)
But if you let it get dark enough to see Jupiter, the clouds have started to roll in and all of the color is shot. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere.
Take what you can get, enjoy the moment, and watch the pretty planets.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Sunsets
They’re closer tonight than they were last night – celestial mechanics is sort of unstoppable – but we saw nothing from Los Angeles.
Sunset was an exercise in Chiaroscuro – very nice.
But there was no way we were going to see Venus or Jupiter. I couldn’t even see the moon overhead.
But an interesting sunset. You take what you can get.
An hour or so later when I went to double check…
Solid overcast & rain. And apparently more of that for the next couple of days.
It would be nice to get a clear sky on Wednesday, the day of closest approach, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Video, Weather
A little bit of color tonight.
Warming weather coming to SoCal for a day or two, then rain.
Again, we always need the rain.
But when it’s completely overcast, grey, and raining, we do miss the colorful sunsets.
It’s all a tradeoff.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
If you’re a pilot, you love to hear that the weather is “clear and a million.” That’s good visibility!
But tonight as the Sun set, it wasn’t just clear and a million. It was clear and 832,517,397 kilometers, all the way to Jupiter. (The bright spot visible at the top left.)
It was also 219,199,744 km to Venus, the bright spot in the lower center.
Not bad for your standard Mark I eyeball! Of course, 30 minutes after this it was dark enough to start seeing the stars, which are much farther away. And if we had dark skies (I’m in LA – we don’t) we could see the Andromeda Galaxy…
It’s a big Universe. Go take a look!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets
One contrail, passing from horizon to horizon.
I didn’t see the plane, but looking at what was overhead on the FlightRadar24 app, it probably came from the south…
…and headed north. Probably a Southwest flight out of San Diego to Sacramento that passed by at 40,000 feet.
The twisty remains of an older contrail? Much more character, much more photogenic. It aged well.
Filed under Flying, Photography, Sunsets, Travel
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