So, I went out Monday night/Tuesday morning to try and catch something for the Lyrids meteor shower that we are currently undergoing. For once, we had ideal conditions, or as ideal as I can possibly achieve in this location: no moon, clear skies, and I traveled down to Jordan Lake to get the darkest skies possible within, oh, thirty kilometers or so (which isn’t all that dark,
Category: Astronomy
This week needs some restraint
There’s a bunch of stuff going on this week that you should already be absolutely aware of and I could avoid posting entirely, but just in case…
This entire week is the Lyrids meteor shower, peaking around Tuesday but hey, meteor
What makes it special
On this date, we remember the man from above, the carpenter’s son who changed the world for all humankind and brought in a whole new culture, outlook, and future by his selfless actions, regardless of how anyone personally feels about it within circles that somehow dismiss his presence. So today, let’s all keep him in our hearts, and strive to emulate the courage and convictions of
A splash of evening color
Just a quick pair of pics, taken less than an hour ago. There will be another post coming, hopefully before the day is out, that has more of those words that you all love so much, but for now, we have color.
And a moon. And if you look closely, Venus. I think it’s Venus.
Yeah, just checked through Stellarium – it’s Venus. You might see it better later on, depends.
Something from yesterday
The images in this post are going to reflect more of my casual shooting stance last night, and I apologize. I went out solely to see if I could capture something in the few minutes that it might be visible, and I did, but didn’t have my heart set on astrophotography and it shows.
Above, a crescent moon was showing notable earthshine on the ‘shadowed’ portion while I was out, so
Moon Face Monday
Hey hey it’s Old Man Al D here with a new topic, “Moon Face Monday!” Today we have a first quarter moon giving way to gibbous phase, taken just hours ago! “Gibbous” comes from the Latin word gibbus, meaning ‘humpbacked,’ which I suppose could be said to apply to such a phase, if you ignore the obvious aspect of bierbeibei,
Brand spanking
It’s about 2:30 AM as I type this – again, my sleep ‘schedule’ is totally wacked and yet, completely typical for me. And knowing that the posting date will show and that some astute reader may refer to this for confirmation of conditions, I feel somehow obligated to refer to events as ‘yesterday’ even though they were a few hours back and all that. But yeah.
Saturday
On this date 1
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
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