{"id":41515,"date":"2026-04-17T23:25:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41515"},"modified":"2026-04-17T23:25:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:25:57","slug":"april-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/04\/april-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"April stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quick reminder that the Lyrids meteor shower<\/strong><\/a> is set to peak on the evening of the 21st<\/sup>-22nd<\/sup>, even though it’s technically going on right now – this is apparently a shower with a long period but a very distinct and sharp peak, so your best bet is early morning on the 22nd<\/sup>. The thin crescent moon will have set by roughly midnight while the peak is somewhere around 4 AM EDT, so give it a shot. What do you have to lose but sleep? And perhaps your patience. Your lack of a stiff neck. And your lens cap in the dark.<\/p>\n

[We now have folding lounge chairs that will allow us to lean back with a better sky view, so perhaps we can avoid the neck thing, though I imagine I’ll be pursuing these on my own.]<\/p>\n

Don’t stay up all night, because you’ll need to be well-rested for all of the elaborate celebrations of Earth Day<\/strong> on the 22nd<\/sup>. Still, keep it mum, because we’re aiming for it to be a surprise. Did you really think Artemis II went around the back side of the moon for no good reason?<\/p>\n

And on the 24th<\/sup>, the Hubble Space Telescope<\/strong><\/a> turns 36 years old, still going strong despite the various advanced ‘scopes that followed. That’s a Friday, so no worries about partying too hard. Let’s see, what was I<\/em> doing at 36? Come to think of it, let’s not go there…<\/p>\n

[I did, idly, wonder how my photographic output compared to Hubble’s, realizing that a)<\/em> I didn’t even have a serious camera until well after it launched, and b)<\/em> it’s been in near-constant operation from the start, with high demands on its time. So while I can lay claim to something near 110,000 digital images, 5,800 slides, and dog knows how many negative images, this probably doesn’t hold a candle to Hubble’s output. Except, a pretty good number of its images are extremely long exposures, like hours or days at a time. And do stacked images count? How about the fact that nearly every image it produces is a combination of several, since the sensors are not RGB or color in any way, and rely on the filters used in front of the sensor and post-processing? This is a rabbit hole I’m already regretting…]<\/p>\n

But anyway, do something for April.<\/p>\n

\"short
Done right now, just for this post – nothing to see though<\/figcaption><\/figure>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A quick reminder that the Lyrids meteor shower is set to peak on the evening of the 21st-22nd, even though it’s technically going on right now – this is apparently a shower with a long period but a very distinct and sharp peak, so your best bet is early morning on the 22nd. The thin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,4,3],"tags":[1735,791,6711],"class_list":["post-41515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-nature","category-photo","tag-earth-day","tag-hubble-space-telescope","tag-lyrids-meteor-shower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41515"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41519,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41515\/revisions\/41519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}