This year we have a new regular post: ‘On this date,’ which I’d considered calling, ‘On this date in history,’ but I decided to shorten the title a little. The premise is, each week I will feature a photo taken on the same date in some past year. I could have made it, for instance, ‘On this date 2010’ but I’m quite sure I would have
Category: Astronomy
Good morning Tycho!
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got my timing down. Again, I mean.
I’ve talked about this countless times now, but for those who have not seen any of the earlier posts, I’ve had a goal of catching sunrise on the central peak of the Tycho crater on the moon
Take that, younger Al!
I was thinking that the crescent moon was going to be bigger than it actually was this morning, so I checked with Stellarium and my sunrise/moonrise app to see when it would appear, knowing that it would be early morning close to sunrise and the sky should be perfectly clear. “Perfectly” is naturally imperfect, by nature – while we may not see distinct and visible clouds, there
It’s all gone dark
The sky did indeed clear enough to do some detailed moon shots, but alas, I was a hair too late.
For those just joining us and not having read enough posts on this blog, get the fuck out no one wants your kind around here I have, for no reason that anyone should examine closely, had the goal of just catching sunrise on the central peak of Tycho, probably the best known crater on the moon.
Yeah, nah
Earlier this evening but on a previous day, I was doing a bit of blog maintenance and checked the post count so far this year: 166 (not counting this one of course.) That not only beats out last year’s count already, by four posts, but places this year fourth out of eleven years so far, with six weeks to go. Am I gonna set a new record? Not likely, because that’s held
From the lair of the Lion came the Fire
Boy, a couple of capital letters makes everything dramatic, doesn’t it? But all I’m referring to is the Leonids meteor shower, which should be peaking tomorrow night or thereabouts.
I have reminders set up on my calendar for about a week in advance, because you can start seeing activity well before a peak, and the Leonids has, at times, been a pretty damn good shower. And I’ve had
Oh, you physics!
More stuff is in the pipeline right now, but it may still take a couple of days to come out, so for now I leave you with a video that is not mine (yeah, I can hear the cheers from here, shut up.) Miss Cellania (possibly not her real name) featured a clip from
One word
Orionids
That doesn’t really cut it though, does it? Even if you know what the Orionids are, I didn’t say when they’d be occurring, and if you did know, you probably wouldn’t need me to tell you when, or even that they are occurring. I was just trying to, you know, counteract my tendency to write too damn much when only a few words would do, or go
Too cool, part 40: Red sprites in incredible detail
Astronomy Picture of the Day today featured a confusing and abstract image, because it’s something probably never seen in this detail before: a collection of red sprites above an active thunderstorm.
Here’s the deal. Occasionally, waaayyyy above the tops of the clouds on some thunderstorms, there is an additional discharge – actually, two different kinds, the other being
Draconids tonight
Just a quick reminder, but the Draconids meteor shower is peaking the evening of October 8th and 9th. As usual, the moon is a bit too bright for optimum viewing, but give it a shot anyway. What have you got to lose, except for sleep, patience, body