[We’re back out at the beach again.] After the day of rain, we got a little better weather and a nice sunset, still with some high clouds to catch the colors, which in hindsight explains why I didn’t find something sooner – I’d been chiding myself for not paying attention, because I was aware of the moon phases for the trip and the new (dark) moon had fallen just two days
Category: Astronomy
More things happening
In the next couple of days (May 5th and 6th, to be precise,) the Eta Aquarids meteor shower should be peaking – this is one of two meteor showers caused by debris from Comet Halley (the other being the Orionids in October.) However, Aquarius is the radiant and
Too cool, part 48: Ingenuity leaves the nest
Astronomy Picture of the Day had the news this morning, and you’ve likely already heard it anyway, but who would if I failed to cover this on my own? Two ‘Too Cools’ ago, we observed
This week in Things
I have routine event reminders in my home calendar, a remnant from the period that I actually had a calendar attached to the blog with nature-photography-related events thereon – only about half of those were carried over, and of those, most of them I don’t post about. But I retained the meteor shower data, so I can tell you that the Lyrids meteor shower is due to peak
Now it’s been 60
That’s right – sixty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union became the first human in space, and the first to orbit the Earth, and the first to scare the hell out of some Russian farmers when he landed, mostly due to the secrecy that the Soviet space program maintained. I’ve covered my thoughts on this accomplishment, and the space race in general,
Too cool, part 46: Perseverance
This is far from the first place you’re likely to have seen this, but there’s also no way I can let this go past. You have almost certainly heard about the touchdown of the Perseverance rover on Mars a few days back now we have the videos of that touchdown, even taken
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So the Industrious Mr Bugg and I actually had two outings this week, in abject denial of the season and the bare fact that there really isn’t much at all to chase, photographically. Thus this is more proof of making the effort, and not something that’s gonna rock anyone’s world. Right now we’re going to deal with only the first outing back on Tuesday, down to Jordan Lake.
Real quick now
Trying to slam this story out before the date changes – wish me luck!
So, in checking out Stellarium earlier (a couple of times, actually,) I noticed that there were a few satellite passes that would appear to cross the still-slightly-crescent moon, one of which would trace right across the crescent itself from side to side, as long as I was in a particular location. Since this wasn’t
A valiant effort
Well, okay, you’ll probably have to be the judge of that…
A few days back, in the previous post, I mentioned that the rising moon the next day would be this itsy-bitsy little crescent, a mere 0.6% illuminated, preceding the sunrise by a little over 20 minutes. I also mentioned that the weather here wasn’t amenable to pursuing it.
In the interim (within a day, really,) the moon became
Too cool, part 45: Lunation libration animation
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.