Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Above is the sequence of the best pictures I took last night when I stayed up late to capture the first lunar eclipse on a winter solstice in almost 400 years.

I had hopes of taking pictures from inside the sunroom through the skylights but I realized they were dirty and I would have to clean them. Unfortunately I out it off until nighttime and so I was out on the roof with the windex freezing on the skylights trying to get them clean. I finally needed to get a hair dryer to remelt the cleaner with a towel to wipe it off. I shouldn't have bothered. Below is an example of the moon through the skylights with bright wings on either side.


Thus I ended up going outside to get the best pictures. It was cold so I had a fire going in the fireplace to warm up after each trip. I have been wrestling mightily with how to get the correct exposure on my crappy 8 MP Kodak camera, which is not a DSLR. I don't feel I deserve a real camera until I learn to take care of this one, and true to form I almost dropped it last night as well.

It seems like it is impossible to take a good picture of the full moon with this camera, I need to find a way to reduce the exposure way down, even as the camera thinks I need a high one because most of the field of vision is dark. I also struggled with having the camera focus on infinity, I finally had some luck with the distant setting, a little mountain icon on the camera. To be honest, once the eclipse was at its darkest I had a good amount of luck by just setting the exposure to a really long time to capture the dark red of the fully eclipsed moon. below is a closeup of an 8 second exposure, distant focus, lens zoomed and then I digitally zoomed and cropped it for this photo. It is the best shot.



I realized that for these long exposures that I was actually getting a good image of the stars around the eclipsed moon as well. So I tried to capture some constellations and the moon. Below are two shots with the moon at upper right, Orion at lower left and light pollution from Wilmington to the southwest at the bottom near the horizon.



I even got the Big dipper in this shot. Click for larger to see.

With my new success with the 8 second exposure to see stars I may try this again at the next new moon.

LCROSS to crash into the moon on Friday morning

Howard reminds me that LCROSS is scheduled to impact the moon on Friday.

Astronomy Service Slooh Will Let You Watch The LCROSS Impact Live On October 9 at 7:30am EDT.

"The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite will hit the moon to created a crater 14 meters in diameter and 2 meters deep. The resulting analysis will help assess how large bodies will damage planets along with an assessment of current water levels in the moon. Plus it involves blowing holes in the moon."

I have been following LCROSS on twitter since its launch. It tends to post quippy remarks about its position and snippets of traveling songs and moon songs. For instance:


These song quotes are from Ticket to the Moon by ELO.

This quote is from the Grateful Dead song, Yellow Moon. This is the tweet that started me worrying about LCROSS's sanity. It's the kind of thing a computer would say before it took over the laboratory and started killing everybody.


Quotes from Space Truckin' by Deep Purple.


LCROSS's nightmare above is courtesy of Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf.


I have this song on my iPod, "Fly Me To the Moon", the Frank Sinatra version.


I also have this song on my iPod, "Destination Moon", the Dinah Washington version on Ultra-Loung Vol 15: Wild Cool and Swing' Too. The other quote is from Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan.

I have now become invested in its fate and I will be sorry to see it crash into the moon.

I realize that whoever is posting for LCROSS is trying to generate interest but having a twitter feed to which anthropomorphisizes a device destined for destruction is getting to me a little. Especially since the discovery of water on the moon by other means may make its destruction fruitless. It claims that it isn't doomed but on a heroic mission like some that have gone before:


Perhaps I am felling a little maudlin.

(other moon songs can be found here.)

Galileo's Original Telescope at the Franklin Institute

We visited the Franklin Institute on Sunday so that I could see an original Galileo telescope that he made and used to make his discoveries of the moons of Jupiter, mountains on the moon, and even seeing some hint of the rings of Saturn. This is the International Year of Astronomy in honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo being the first to turn a telescope to the skies and record his observations.

The telescope he used looks very plain, I suppose because it was early effort and a working instrument. Galileo wrote a note of the device's magnification on one end. You can see the writing in the next photo.


Galileo did make nicer telescopes as gifts for his patrons, such as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but they only had a replica of one at the Franklin Institute. It is famous however for appearing with Derick Pitts, the chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute when he was on the Colbert Report.

Galileo made many more observations after 1609, one collection of famous ones from March 1st, 1613 to May 8th was published “Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari” (”The Sunspot Letters to Marc Welser”).

Massimo Mogi Vicentini took the manuscript and the observations of Jupiter's moons and turned it into a nice animation.

(video link found via Strange Paths, videos at Mogi-Vice, pictures of the telescope were taken by me without a flash, to not damage the exhibits, but against the rules, I did get caught by the guards and had to stop)

Hubble captures transit of Saturn's moons

The Hubble telescope has taken some very nice pictures of four of Saturn's moons transiting at once.



Titan is the largest visible at the top. Enceladus, Dione, and their shadows on Saturn are on the left, while Mimas is visible on the right. The moons, Saturn and Earth with the Hubble telescope orbiting it have to be aligned just right to get these images. Someone had to do the calculations of place and time so that Hubble could be pointed at Saturn to catch it.

More pictures and videos are available at the HubbleSite.

The Jupiter, Venus and Moon Show

Howard reminded me that tonight is a rare conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon tonight. I needed a tripod to get the shot because my hands are so shaky. This half second exposure taken at 6:30pm washes out the moon a little but lets you see the planets better. Venus is the bright dot at the bottom and Jupiter is the less bright dot on the right. I was afraid I would miss it because of the rain earlier this evening, but the rain stopped and the clouds moved away sufficiently. What really stopped my observations was the setting of these three into the treeline.

I wonder what myth that the Romans or Greeks could spin out of a conjunction of the love goddess Venus(Aphrodite) and a moon goddess, Luna (Selene) or Diana (Artemis) who replaced her, take your pick, with Jupiter (Zeus) the king of the Gods. Jupiter stories usually picture him chasing women so I am sure it would be interesting. Zeus had a child with Selene in the Homeric myths, but Artemis is Zeus daughter, and sworn to virginity. Venus is also a daughter of Jupiter but she is all about love. Probably it would be a myth about an argument.

Total Lunar Eclipse pictures from northern Delaware

I was able to capture the first half of last night's total lunar eclipse with my camera. The moon was at such a good angle that I didn't have to go outside, which probably contributed to the number of pictures I took, if not to their quality. The angle was so good that if I slept with my head at the foot of my bed I wouldn't have even needed to get up to watch it. That's my kind of astronomy.


Here is a composite of the first half with the moon being covered. The second half with the moon being revealed was after my bedtime. I did change some exposure setting during the eclipse as the moon became less bright, and the last was taken with the tripod finally and was a much longer exposure to bring out the red of the moon. I think they turned out well considering the equipment and the photographer, the next step would be a much more expensive camera, lessons on how to use it, mounted outside on a tripod.



This picture, taken at the height of the eclipse, was taken with an 8 second exposure with me holding the camera as still as possible braced against the window frame. I wanted this one because I couldn't get an angle with the tripod with the moon, Saturn and Regulus from the consetallation Leo all in the same shot so I had to hold the camera myself. I still jiggled a little but you get the gist of it. Saturn is to the left and Regulus above (I think? Any comments or corrections?), click for a bigger picture.

Include links to your lunar eclipse pictures in the comments. Howard was watching too, maybe he has pictures.

(learn about Saturn, and Regulus in Leo)

Perseid meteor shower viewing and Jupiter

The last two nights were supposed to be good viewing for the Perseid meteor shower. The advice given by the magazines is to find a dark night sky with a view to the northeast for good viewing. I didn't feel like going to some Chester County field to battle insects all night so I improvised by sitting out on our cul-de-sac. Since there is only four houses on the street I thought I had a good chance not to be run over by cars, and the lack of trees growing out of the pavement at least meant that the sky directly above would be visible.

I actually went out on Saturday Night around 10pm or so and saw three really good meteors over the course of about an hour. One looked as long as twelve inches or so at arm's length. On Sunday night we say at least two good sightings over about an hour and maybe a few lighter ones that we couldn't decide were overactive imagination or not. Then the clouds rolled in and stopped the viewing. Though there are no street lights on the street, house path lighting and general light pollution from further away meant that only the brightest meteors were visible. I don't know about the 40 per hour the articles state. That must be if you are watching in the Arizona desert hundreds of miles from lights or civilization.


I learned that I can set as long as an 8 second exposure on my digital camera. Given the meteor rate described above, I would need minutes in order to catch a meteor, so no pictures of shooting stars. Instead, I turned around and looked south to get this picture of Jupiter and Antares. I assumed it was Venus at the time (What other bright object can you think of?), but the star charts set me straight. This was with an 8 second exposure on my Kodak camera, which is actually unsuitable to the task.

The shower continues through the end of the month, but lessens each evening, so you still haven't missed your chance. Did any of you stay out to try to catch a glimpse of a meteor this weekend?

Look to the Skies! Help map light polution this month.

GLOBE at Night is having a World Wide Hunt for Stars by asking people to go outside at night from March 8th until March 21st and see if they can see the constellation of Orion, an easily recognizable constellation that makes a good reference. You compare your viewing conditions to a series of samples from the site and add in your location and it is used to build a worldwide map of light pollution. The less of Orion you can see the more light pollution in your area.

I think the magnitude charts are a pretty clever way to help gage light pollution. From my location, I think I can see the same as the magnitude 4 chart (on left). I have not added the trees that block some of my viewing area to the chart at left. That's why in this house I have switched to nature watching rather than sly watching, much of my sky is blocked by nature!

I made my report tonight, how about you? Tell me what you can see and your rough location in the comments.

(via Yahoo News)