I’ve mentioned, many times, the curious wobble of the moon known as libration, and of course the different features and details you can see when photographing anything other than a completely full moon. Now, courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day comes a wicked animation of it, with lots of additional details.
Category: Astronomy
Auspicious?
So yeah, my first post of the new year is gonna be a trivial one, and I’ll let you read into that whatever you like, because I know it’s mostly due to a lack of available time. I have a few things planned or in process, but they’ll be a little while in coming.
Right now, I’ll tell you that the Quadrantids meteor shower is peaking tonight – I should have been along with
On this date 53
As further evidence of my poor planning about this time a year ago, the normal weekly entry for the ‘On This Date’ posts would be tomorrow, but as I look at my spreadsheet for December 30th I find that (as far as my annotated, digital images go anyway,) I’ve shot nothing. Not a sausage. Hell of a finalé, eh? Ah, well – see you next year.
Nah, I can’t let it go at that.
Gave it a try
Yes, I did indeed get out to view the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn yesterday evening – for what it was worth. I can tell you right now, there are better efforts out there, with better, more dedicated equipment (and probably no small amount of digital “enhancement,” or “compositing,” or as most people call it, “photoshopping.”) I knew how challenging
A correction: Not even a whisker
Back on November 18th, I posted about going out early that morning to try and snag some of the Leonids meteor shower that was peaking then, and successfully capturing a couple. But a few days after that post as I was sorting the images, I looked closely at a few of them
Too cool, part 43: Something for the solstice
Not only are we going to cross the line on December 21st with the winter solstice, so the days start getting longer thereafter, but we’re going to have an interesting conjunction visible in the early evening sky. Courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day (among numerous other sources
On this day (a whisker of success)
In the previous post, I mentioned attempting in vain to capture any of the Leonid meteors nine years ago, ending with, “Leave it to me to chase meteors on the colder nights…” And since it was 4°C at 4 AM this morning, guess what I decided to attempt again?
The primary difference being, this time I was moderately successful!
But first off, the false alarm.
I saw a
On this date 47
Just four (well, four-ish) this time – could have had a lot more, because I’ve shot plenty on this date, but some were repetitive, and some have already been featured in posts. We’ll start with 2003.
At this point in time, I was living in Florida but up visiting with Jim Kramer for a week, while he still lived in North Carolina. This was playing around
Tell me why…
… I get up to things like this.
So, okay, I got two different detailed photos of a gibbous moon, one waxing, one waning, taken 10 days apart. And of course, at different heights in the sky, so angled differently, as shown here in the original orientations.
Now, some landmarks. If you look at the left version, there is a dark almost-circular, almost-centered spot in the visible
Showers and ‘shopping
Two things to mention here, real quick-like now.
First, we are approaching the peak of the Leonids meteor shower, in two days, but you may be able to go out at any time in the next week or so and see something – the moon will be dark, so if you have clear skies in your area, give it a shot. The worst that can happen is you get horribly slaughtered by the Meteor Shower Murderer,