While I did not announce it like I often do here, we’ve just passed the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, tied in with some halfway decent viewing conditions and, unlike many other showers in the past, acceptable temperatures to be standing out in a dark location for hours at a time. I actually went out to try and capture
Tag: night sky photography
This is not a comet
It’s probably not too far from what I would have captured if I tried, admittedly, and the intention was to try, just a little later on. This came Friday night, when I stepped out to check conditions and decided to shoot the first-quarter (“half”) moon real quick. This is not the first-quarter moon either, but the [ahem] ‘dagger’ in
Living in the past I
I noticed in passing that the post count was at 2,470 at the end of last month, which meant that I could reach 2,500 posts at the end of the year – if I did better than I have been. I wasn’t worried about it – I’d prefer to post regarding content rather than arbitrary numbers – but then this afternoon I realized how I could meet this goal and have a bit of
Visibly different, part 47
This one was inspired when I was going through the folders and realized I had a counterpart that was just done recently (like, since the last Visibly Different post.) We start back in October 2009.
Part of the reasoning behind this was wanting a portrait of myself to use for promotional purposes, only not serious ones – I’m never going to be a realtor so I don’t
Pfeh
So not only did I get out to view the ‘peak’ of the Leonids meteor shower on Thursday night/Friday morning, I returned on Friday night/Saturday morning for the predicted surge. Though you wouldn’t know it in the slightest – yeah, it was that bad. The first night was notably cold, dropping below freezing, which I realize doesn’t hold a candle to some northern weather
Are you kidding me?
I’d seen the skies looking quite clear yesterday evening, the first time in days, so I thought I’d try for the meteor storm, and early this morning (like a little after midnight,) I drove down to Jordan Lake, the best night sky spot in the area, to see what I could see.
The first thing was, the humidity was very high and the haze had rolled in, so only stars of higher magnitude were visible
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
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,
Another alert
In the next couple of nights, the Perseids meteor shower is supposed to be peaking, and of course, I say this with a certain fatalism, because my personal history of meteor showers is pretty disappointing: one fantastic shower,
Needs something
One of my background projects, along with everything else that I’ve been involved with in the past couple of weeks, has been the attempt to capture images of comet C/2020 F3, mostly known as NEOWISE, which has been visible just before dawn for large portions of the northern hemisphere, and recently moved into being visible after sunset as well. The views are to the north, roughly at 30°