Blackholes and astrostuff

Total Lunar Eclipse

2011-12-10T11:05:00.008-06:00

Just finished viewing and imaging a Total Lunar Eclipse, so thought I'd post some images.

The next Total Lunar Eclipse won't be til April of 2014, having said that there will still be a lot of celestial delights going on before then, especially in 2012.

First off because of all the solar activity going on, 2012 promises to bring lots of Auroras.

The Evening of Saturday March 3 you'll see the Moon, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Mars in the sky at the same time with Orion right in the middle of them. A few weeks later Monday March 26 we get to see a triangle shape conjunction of the Moon, Pleiades and Venus, doesn't happen that often, should be cool to view and image.

Venus gets real close to the Pleiades, almost right in the mix Tuesday April 3, again a rare occurrence and won't happen again for another 8 years.

Now on Sunday May 20 the American Southwest gets treated to a Partial Solar Eclipse..but not just any kind of Partial, It will be an Annular, very rare, when the Moon fits just inside the Sun. Most of Canada will receive a regular Partial Solar Eclipse but I am seriously considering driving down to the states just to see and photograph it, it's that cool.

Another biggie....Tuesday June 5 we get a transit of Venus across the face of the Sun, most of Canada will get to see some or all of the event.

Last but not least Monday August 13 we get a daytime Occultation of Venus as the Moon sweeps in front of it. Theses are just some of the major events taking place... a very good year, then we got the whole end of the world thing going on December 21. I'll try to keep you up todate closer to the events so you don't miss.

10 Free Astronomy Apps and Resources

2011-12-04T16:37:00.010-06:00

We have a guest poster to start Blackholes and astrostuff back to the blogging world. Karen Schweitzer. Karen writes about online colleges and universities for BestOnlineColleges.com, as well as writing articles for for About.com Business Schools. Check them out, some good stuff, thanks Karen.

10 Free Astronomy Apps and Resources

Astronomy happens to be a very fascinating area of study, which is why so many people are drawn to it. It is the science of all things celestial, from stars and comets to planets and galaxies. If you are interested in learning more about astronomy, the following free apps and resources are sure to expand your knowledge.

Astronomy - Although this website is a part of Astronomy magazine, there are many features that are free to enjoy. There are dozens of interesting articles on astronomy, as well as various blogs. This site also publishes a “Picture of the Day,” and gives you the chance to subscribe to the magazine if you wish to do so.

ProfessorAstronomy - This blog, created by a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is dedicated to all things astronomy. The blog entries are based upon scientific research, yet still convey a sense of originality and entertainment to readers. There are also many useful links for astronomy fans listed on the blog.

Introduction To Astronomy - This free course, offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseware program, is a great way to learn all the basics of the solar system. This course is excellent for those who would like to gain knowledge in the area of astronomy on their own time. It provides actual assignments to students for a better learning experience.

JodCast - If you are looking for a podcast devoted to astronomy, look no further than Jodcast. It is set up by a group of astronomers from the University of Manchester and is broadcasted near the beginning of each month. The group that produces this podcast encourages astronomers from all over the world to chime in and add their input if they wish.

NASA - Anyone who knows anything about space and astronomy has most likely heard of NASA. This website for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has loads of great information on astronomy, space, and beyond. This site also contains photo galleries, blogs, podcasts, and many more resources for astronomy fans.

SkyMaps - Do you enjoy stargazing at night? If so, this online resource provides free evening sky maps each month. These sky maps offer star charts that make it easy to identify various constellations and planets. In addition to the free monthly sky charts, this site also offers other astronomy products.

Kid’s Astronomy - This fabulous site was made just for kids who would like to learn about the exciting world of astronomy. With educational games, as well as free online classes and informative articles, this site makes learning about astronomy a fun experience for children of all ages.

Astronomy Forum- If you would like the opportunity to discuss astronomy with others, this website is the perfect resource for you. It offers numerous online forums that are sure to spark the interest in any astronomy follower. This site also gives users the chance to sign up for a free newsletter that contains articles, news, and information on astronomy events.

BadAstronomy - Phil Plait, who is a successful astronomer and teacher, created this website that features a very informative blog. There are lots of other resources on this site as well, such as a list of astronomy-related movies. Plait also provides helpful links to other websites that may interest astronomy lovers.

UniverseToday - This site is a great source for all the latest astronomy news. Universe Today publishes educational, easy to read articles on a regular basis. If you like to stay up-to-date in the world of astronomy, subscribe to this site as soon as possible.

All of these apps and resources are perfect for anyone who would like to learn more about astronomy. Not only are they free, but very informative as well. If you are a fan of astronomy, check them out today.

Winter Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse Movie

2011-01-03T06:52:00.005-06:00

Well I finally put together some of my images from the eclipse to make this movie. The next Total Lunar Eclipse visible from my area will be December 10 2011. I can't help but wonder what I'll be doing or where I'll be when it occurs. Things change, doors close, new ones open. I think a lot of the time we stare too long at the closed doors we don't notice the new one being open for us, do we go in look around and then back out or do we go for it, only God knows.

I took the image below December 31, the last Moon Rise of 2010. Watching an orange Crescent Moon Rise is always so surreal for me, add to it -26c and 5:30am and you get the feeling like you're the only one around probably watching the show. In the distant a couple miles there is a highway that runs in front of it, watching the tiny headlights of the cars travel in front of it, makes it even more odd, surely they see what I see, why don't they stop and take it in, well I guess they have somewhere to be. I think there is a lot of stuff going on that we don't notice, it's cool sometimes to take the time to stop what you're doing, as in my case sleeping in my cozy bed, leave it's comfort and experience something even more juicy, taking that step of faith that there is something out there worth the effort with awesome results. One last thing, got a mention as one of the top 50 blogs about space travel, which is cool...all the best in 2011.

Lunapic Photo Editing

Winter Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse

2010-12-21T12:52:00.004-06:00

Well, didn't get to see the Geminids due to clouds, or the Moon Pleiades conjunction, again due to clouds and snow, but 3rd times the charm, got to see and image a very rare Winter Solstice Total Eclipse of the Moon, WOO HOO! Hasn't been one for over 300 years and the next won't happen till 2094.

Touch and go up to the event whether or not I was going to see it at all, was a light cloud cover throughout but my good ole faithful Moon burnt through to put on quite the show, I hope and actually know some of you got to see it, Astro-Nuts was with and he got some great pics, JJ got some great images as well as Genie, as of this writing Genie and Astro-Nuts have only posted to FB, anyone else get pics just send me some and I will post here.

Went pretty smooth cept for the fact I almost killed myself, as I was carrying my 90 pound scope across my slippy deck to mount it on the tripod I slipped and would have gone down if not for the fact there was a bbq behind me which kept me up, man that so would have sucked. All good in the end and got the shots, 240 of them, I hope to stitch them together soon into a movie, which I will post. Last but not least, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Space Goings On for December

2010-12-05T18:55:00.010-06:00

Finally, after almost 3 years we will be treated to a Total Lunar Eclipse starting at 1:32 am EST. December 21. I took the above image during the last Total Lunar Eclipse, February 20, 2008. If you live in North America and miss this one you'll be waiting awhile for the next...April 2014. If you look real close, preferably with binocs just before and right after totality you'll see a beautiful turquoise color, like the above image.

During a Lunar Eclipse, the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, you see the reddish brown on the Moon as the result of the Sunlight going through the Earth's stratosphere which absorbs the blues and allows the reds through to the Moon's surface, much like our lower atmosphere does during Sunrises/sets. Just before and after totality some of the Sunlight reaches into the Ozone layer which absorbs the reds and allows the blues through to the Lunar surface, just an fyi. Later that day, we have the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, now the good thing about that is after it occurs the days will be getting longer, sweet.

December 13th look to the East for the Geminids Meteor Shower, they have actually started right now but will peak in numbers around 2 am, EST. December 14. If not for my Fisheye lens I would not have been so lucky to capture the low Geminid back in 2008. I was actually out to capture an Ursid Meteor in the Big Dipper near the end of December when by a total fluke caught the latecomer Geminid. Cool thing about low meteors is the dust in the lower atmosphere tends to make them more colorful, like the green above.

On December 18th the Moon and Pleiades will be getting together. If you can score a pair of binocs do so. They are a perfect celestial couple and look awesome through them and since the Moon will be near full it will kind of wash out the Pleiades, the binocs will help make them more visible. I will give reminders here as well and weather permitting take and post the images here.

A New Song

2010-11-25T07:33:00.009-06:00

So, this is what I've been doing for the last 5 months. I mentioned in my last post that I was working with some talented musicians, well we have a name for our group now and our first recorded song. The name of the song , "Restless Dreams", the name of the group, "Soul Reviver".

But to me it's really not about the music as much as it is about the friendships that have developed in the group, Dennis Perry on Bass, Dale Kostyk on Drums and did the mixdown on the song, and our fearless leader, singer, songwriter Guitarist Ed Saraka, the man who got it all started last July. I've known Ed for some 25 years and when he gave me the call to join the project I thought Ed's involved, gonna be good. The call came at a point in my life when I was wondering what to do next, my life hadn't turned out quite the way I planned, maybe joining a rock and roll group will make it all better, hey God does work in mysterious ways.

Restless Dreams was written at a turning point in my life, you know when you come to a point in your life when you realize you've made mistakes and look within yourself and find there is nothing you can do, or anyone else for that matter, so you make a choice, look to a higher power, ie God and realize crap I should have done this a long time ago, God forgives you, you forgive yourself (the hardest part) and move on, the end. But not really the end, always doubts, we are after all only human, that's why it's nice to have God 24/7 to pull us back into line again when we doubt about our self worth, our purpose.

As far as Blackholes and astrostuff look for more posts, if only as Anna suggested the odd image or so.

Where to Find Astronomy Videos And Photo Galleries Online

2010-06-26T14:12:00.018-05:00

I have another great guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about pharmacy technician certification for PharmacyTechnicianCertification.com.

Browsing astronomy video and photo galleries is a great way to learn more about space and get a look at things you might otherwise never see. The following ten sites host thousands of videos and images for your viewing pleasure.

Space.com Video Collection - Space.com has assembled hundreds of astronomy videos from around the web and put them in one easy-to-access collection. More than 500 videos can be view directly in Space.com's video player.

ScienceDaily Video Collection - ScienceDaily, a site that reports on the latest science news, hosts a large selection of astronomy videos. Videos include clips of the moon, planets, asteroids, meteors, stars, black holes, space exploration, and much more.

Sixty Symbols Video Collection - Created by the University of Nottingham, Sixty Symbols provides an interesting library of videos about the symbols of physics and astronomy. The site also links to their Flickr photo collection.

Discovery.com Video Collection - Discovery.com has an excellent collection of videos for space and science enthusiasts. The videos feature the top 10 greatest discoveries in astronomy.

National Geographic Video Collection - National Geographic offers dozens of high-quality space videos in their online science video collection. Videos cover everything from the latest news in space and shuttle missions to forces of nature.

NASA Image Gallery - NASA offers a wide range of videos and images on their site. Photos include images from the Kennedy Space Center, NASA aircraft, aeronautics facilities, and research centers. Visitors can browse collections or search for images using NASA's image exchange engine.

Hubble Gallery - The Hubble Site offers a huge selection of images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Site visitors can browse individual images, search albums, or tour entire image galleries.

Astronomy Magazine's Online Reader Gallery - Astronomy Magazine posts a wide range of images snapped by astrophotographers from around the world. Registered members can leave comments on the images or submit their own photo. Image categories include the sun and moon, comets, star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae.

NOAO Image Gallery - This site features pictures taken with the facilities of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The gallery includes images of the sun, moon, stars, solar system, nebulae, galaxies, telescopes, and more.

APOD Archives - Created by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) features the largest collection of annotated astronomy images on the web. Archives include images that have been posted daily from 1995 to present day.

Thanks a lot Karen, I little update about me, I have been very fortunate to hook up with some talented musicians and am getting back to creating music with the main goal of putting a CD of originals together within the year, lot easier to write stuff when you understand more about who you are, very exciting times, and I Thank God for this.

I will be getting back into posting more regularly in the future, thanks for all your kind comments and emails, you have all been just super.

Storm Worlds and Lunar Venus Conjunction

2010-05-12T07:13:00.008-05:00

National Geographic Channel has come through once again with a super 3 part mini series
Storm Worlds, premiering this Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 8-11 PM ET.

Starting off, Cosmic Fire. Imagine a solar event like a huge Coronal Mass Ejection, so powerful it takes out all the power grids across the world and puts us into darkness, destroying communication satellites...no more cell phones. Using dramatic recreations and Computer Generated Imagery National Geographic Channel takes us there, don't think it's possible? Back in 1859 a solar event was so powerful it took out the technologies of the time..the telegraph, over the United States and Europe, actually starting fires in the telegraph offices and just back in 1989 a solar storm one fifth the size of the one in 1859 took out power in Quebec for 11 hours.

A dream team of scientists and policy makers meet in Washington regularly to discuss ways of understanding and dealing with space weather, a natural and alien force that stalks the Earth with the power to send us back to the Steam age. If an event like the one in 1859 was to happen.. and it is when..not if it does, we are not prepared physiologically, culturally or technologically to handle it.

Next up, Alien Wind. Watch with the aid of CGI space storms off the chart in size and power and let me tell you after watching this premier you'll be thanking your lucky stars, for as unpredictable and sometimes stupid our weather is here on our little Earth, it pales in comparison to Saturn's lightning, 10,000 times more powerful than ours..or wind gusts of 11,000 mph on extrasolar planet HD 80606B, methane rain storms on Titan or storms lasting 100's of years on Jupiter. Watch as these storms attack San Francisco using cutting-edge CGI fantasy sequences.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a Martian size dust storm hit Earth? probably not, but you get to see it using the aid of...that's right CGI, watch as talcum fine dust sandblasts everything in it's path, searing flesh like bleach, impossible to breath and there is nowhere to hide..sucks, good thing it's just fantasy, but fun to watch.

Unfortunately again these premiers are only initially showing in the States, not to worry though, coming to a local celestial theater near you, Saturday May 15 a slim crescent Moon meets up with Venus, just look to the west at Sunset, the Moon will be just below Venus, promises to be a pretty site and great photo op.

I want to leave you now with an animation of my "Sprouting Grass Full Moon" with corona, the name given the April Full Moon by early Native Americans.

National Geographic Channel "Known Universe" Premiere

2010-03-28T17:54:00.008-05:00

National Geographic Channel comes through again with a six part mini series highlighting profound mysteries of our known universe. Really the only fault I can find with any of these shows is the fact that they only show in the US, sucks if you live any where else. Computer Generated Imagery, time lapse sequences, slow motion footage, everyday examples and expert's input all go towards great cosmic TV viewing.

Known Universe: Cosmic Collisions

Thursday, April 1, at 10 PM ET.

Apophis a 230 meter near earth object is slated to come between Earth and it's geosynchronous satellites December 2029, it will just miss us but if it happens to enter what they call the keyhole, an area 600 meters wide above the Earth, the Earth's Gravity will alter it's orbit which will put it into a collision course with us on it's return trip April 17, 2036, fatalities estimated at 10 million. We are in a shooting gallery and it is not a question of if but when we get hit by one of these near earth Objects. Using Computer Generated Imagery you'll see, various cosmic collisions like a major asteroid hitting the north pole of Mars, removing the Martian crust and creating the Lowlands, covering almost half the planet. An asteroid hit Venus so hard that it changed it's direction of spin, you'll see 2 neutron stars collide creating more energy in a micro second then our Sun will produce in it's entire 10 billion year lifetime.

Known Universe: Stellar Storms

Thursday, April 8, at 10 PM ET.

Start off with seeing the worst, tornadoes, earthquakes, lightning/thunderstorms, heatwaves the Earth has to offer then travel to Jupiter to visit the Great Red Spot, a storm 3 times the size of Earth that has been going on for maybe 1,000s of years, with winds up to 500 mph, which btw would rip into wood, Earth's fastest recorded wind is 300 mph. Head to Neptune's Great Dark Spot, a storm the size of Earth with winds of up to 1000 mph, then off to exoplanet HD80606B (image above) with storm winds of up to 11, 000 mph. Saturn's Moon Titan coming in at around -300 F has methane showers and lakes, exoplanet Corot-7b with temps of 3,000 F has rivers and lakes of molten minerals and liquefied zinc showers. See dust storms on Mars that cover the whole planet, you'll visit these places and more with the aid of cool CGI

Known Universe: Alien Contact

Thursday, April 16, at 10 PM ET.

The age old question, is there other intelligent life out there somewhere in the Cosmos? Did God create the heavens so we could take pictures of cool things like galaxies just so we could use them as wallpaper on our desktops? I personally think there is other intelligent life out there, I mean there are billions and billions of galaxies, and billions and billions of stars in each of those galaxies, with the majority having planets orbit them, odds are there has got to be a few with intelligent life on them. You'll learn of the Kepler Mission to hunt out Earth like planets, visit SETI, travel to Saturn's Moon Enceladus, Jupiter's Europa, both ice wolds that may have life beneath their surface.

Known Universe: Decoding The Skies

Thursday, April 29, at 10 PM ET.

What we take for granted, and rarely even look at anymore, our cosmos, was what the ancients used and decoded for survival. Being able to understand the stars was key in developing, clocks and calenders, gave the hunter gathers of the time the ability to know when the best time was for planting crops, giving them the power to adapt, therefore they could advance from hunter gatherers to settlers and better make use of their time to solve more of their day to day problems. You'll see some of the most magnificent and largest monuments ever built, such as the Pyramids and Stonehenge how they are related to the heavens and if maybe the ancients had a little help with the construction from alien visitors. Just a cool fact, one of many in this show. The Dogon tribe in North Africa worshiped a star Sirius B back in 3200BC, the thing is it wasn't even discovered till 1862, how did they know about it, simple, they said they had visitors from there, well I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying it's kind of cool, the Ancients if nothing else have very interesting histories.

Known Universe: Final Frontiers

Thursday, May 6, 10 PM ET.

The two major frontiers left to explore, Deep Space and our Deep Oceans, we have only explored 5% of our oceans and less then that of space. Blind shrimp, albino crabs, huge clams, giant tube worms, with human like blood, up until just a while ago we never knew these things ever existed here on earth, deep in our oceans. The ability to stand and thrive in extreme pressures with no sunlight, life was more adaptable and creative then we could ever have imagined, life elsewhere in the universe became a whole lot more probable. This gave scientists who are looking for alien life a better understanding of how life on other planets might thrive and where to go looking for it, like the ice moons of Enceladus and Europa . Interesting fact, there are 2 million animal and plant species, living on the Earth, 200,000 living in our oceans, some scientists are saying there might be as many as 25 million more marine species to be discovered. From Deep Oceans to Deep Space, you'll learn how our universe is expanding and why. Ninety Five percent of our Universe is made up of stuff we do not know the nature of, Dark Matter and Dark Energy may be the cause of it's expansion.

Known Universe: Cosmic Fury

Thursday, May 13, 10 PM ET.

Volcanoes and Earthquakes have killed 75 million people in recorded history, can you imagine if we had planet wide volcanoes like Venus, at any one time, Venus has 1600 major erupting volcanoes and up to 100,000 smaller ones. Io, one of Jupiter's Moons has 300 going on at the same time , with eruptions 100s of miles in the air. Being so close to Jupiter the tidal forces at work are such that during it's high tide the surface is actually stretched 330 ft in the air. Our Sun has solar flares thousands of miles into space, when they break they snap down onto it's surface creating a Sun quake, 11.3 on the Richter scale, 100 times more powerful then our largest ever recorded Earthquake. Talk about Cosmic Fury, Magnetars, a type of Neutron star, their flares can cause quakes of 32 on the Richter scale, that would turn Earth's crust inside out.

Well there you have it, some cool shows coming your way the next couple months. I'll leave you now with a preview of the first in the series Cosmic Collisions.

Mostly Images

2010-03-13T07:19:00.015-06:00

Been quite busy taking tons of images lately and just thought I'd post some of them. The Moon and Pleiades are my favorite celestial grouping and a week from tonight, Saturday March 20 they will once again be dancing together across the night sky, look to the SW just after Sunset to see them, use binoculars if you can.

I used to think that atmospheric phenomena such as Solar and Lunar halos were rather rare,

but am finding due to the fact that I am out and about more these days, I have noticed that they come and go frequently, got 3 halos a corona and some sundogs within a time frame of just over a month.

What it is, they aren't so much rare as fleeting, caught all the events while either just leaving or coming home from some place and rushing to get my camera, which by the way I have set up and ready to go by my back door.

The Solar halo above for example, I was just pulling into my driveway from work and noticed while getting out of the car and looking up, half a solar halo, ran into the house grabbed my camera which was already set up by the back door allowing me to be out on the back deck taking images just as it was completing the arc, took a few pics and then watched it dissolve away right before my very eyes, total time..around 5 minutes.

Same with the sundogs and solar pillar, coming home for lunch noticed the dogs, got the camera and snapped the image, they lasted the longest of all the phenomena, around 15 minutes, it's all about stopping to smell the roses, look and you shall receive.

Went out with Astro-Nuts to capture the elusive zodiacal lights. They are very faint but beautiful, they mimic light pollution. The zodiacal light is a product of Sunlight being scattered by cosmic dust left behind by comets and asteroids, therefore it is most apparent right above the setting Sun, lower right in the above image. Notice as well the wasted light on the left of the image taking out part of Orion, caused by Saskatoon's famous light polluting, Co2 producing Dakota Dunes Casino, wasting energy, light and also taking away our God given beauty and wonders of the night sky......they have no shame.

And a favorite thing of mine, a morning Moon, took the above image with my telescope a week ago, woke up early morning, no wind, birds chirping. God is so good putting me at the right place at the right time, to be able to transform these temporary and fleeting moments into images to be shared and appreciated by you.

The Apollo Missions and Life

2010-02-28T09:37:00.020-06:00

10...9... main ignition start...6...5...4...3...2...1...0......lift off.....we have lift off, 32 minutes past the hour................launch tower cleared.

"I describe it as a nervous novice driving a wide car down a narrow alley, gotta make corrections and what it is , it's those big motors underneath gimbling underneath, you know swirling back and forth to keep you in balance. You feel by the seat of your pants, thinking gee that launch tower is just a few feet off the one side, I hope this sucker ain't gonna gimble in that direction too much and then when they tell ya launch tower cleared you kinda say oh wosh, we don't have to worry about hitting that moose, then off you go" Mike Collins Apollo 11.

Was watching In The Shadow of the Moon last night for like about the 20 gazillionth time and it really hit home how these astronauts who ventured to the Moon all had profound experiences, how all their lives had changed, so much so that what they once thought was important, now seemed trivial. Some even made major decisions about following God, it changed their lives, little things like not worrying about the price of gas any more, about crowded places like malls, Alan Bean is happy now there were people after visiting such a desolate place as the Moon.

After going through a life changing event myself I can relate to some of their thinking, let me make this perfectly clear, I don't pretend that what has happened to me is any worse then what has happened to a lot of other people, I know of people in far off worse places then I, serious illnesses and the such, but I know somewhat how they feel and what they are going through, but that's what it is all about , helping each other get through difficult times to the other side.

This blog post is something I have put off for a long time, I hope by reading it you will in some way benefit, maybe even help you get through your rough times. It's about how I handled an overwhelming situation by making what I feel to be the right lifelong decisions, and of course relating it back to the Apollo Missions, my most favorite thing ever, so here we go.

When it seemed no one was was there for me, God was. I said God look, just been told after 30 years of Marriage, the one I loved no longer wants to be with me, mostly my fault made some bad decisions, God said no problem, he is after all in the business of forgiveness, with Jesus, John 3:16 and all, He took me, put me in the command module, strapped me in, said hold on, and I was off.

Now the fun begins. Initially I was trying to make all kinds of course corrections early on with all the buttons at my disposal in my command module to try and get where I thought I had to get to, God of course was correcting my wrong corrections with the rocket's motors, pulling me away from the Launch Tower at just the right time, keeping me straight. It is reassuring that no matter how bad we continue to screw things up, God knows about it ahead of time, I mean it's not like he's up there saying "Wow...never saw that coming....any ideas, Peter...Jesus........anyone?" he is there to guide and correct you from as Mike Collins put it "hitting that moose" which is very comforting.

"Will metal stand this kind of vibration, have the engineers realized how this thing shakes? because it shakes so much more then I ever imagined." Alan Bean Apollo 12.

Since God is my engineer, he knew what I could stand, no matter what I was going through especially in the early stages of my adventure like getting off the launch pad and the forces at work against it, with God's help I got through it in one piece.

"Those engines, those 5 engines, when ignited shakes the whole body to reverberation from it, it's very emotional." Edgar Mitchell Apollo 14.

Actually very emotional, you know when God's guiding engines cut in, even though it shakes you to the core, you know you are going somewhere forward.

"You're not just riding along, a lot of people think you're just lying on your back waiting for it to happen, but not really, because every second is something of significance" Dave Scott Apollo15.

From the outside looking in it looks like the person who is working through a major upset is kinda just getting on when in reality, the person is changing their whole outlook on life, making decisions on the go, reflecting and growing, coming to grips with what has been dealt them and in my case couldn't have happened without God, Christ and the Holy Spirit to help me.

Once you get off the launch pad, into space and on to your new place, somewhere between where you were and where you're going, the blindfold comes completely off, you look behind to see where you came from getting smaller and smaller, but more important it's gravity or effect on you is less and less, your new destination on the other hand getting big and bigger and it's pull on you, it's gravity increases, the "why me".... "who's fault is it" questions start to fade away and the anticipation of a new start becomes more focused.

"I always thought of myself as one of the more fearful astronauts, really, and when I look out that window of the spacecraft I would think if that window blows out I'm going to die in about a second...there's death right out side there about an inch away." Alan Bean Apollo 12.

Sometimes, alone in your little command module, you do fret what God has in store for you, even though you are not alone, God is always there even though sometimes it feels like he's not. You vacillate between fear and exaltation.

"I didn't feel it as loneliness, I certainly didn't feel it as fear, I felt it as awareness almost a feeling of exaltation, I kind of liked it, good feeling, everything was going well in the command module, had my happy little home, had the bright lights on, everything was fine, I enjoyed that time."
Mike Collins Apollo 11.

This post was not about me insomuch as what God has done for me, given me a richer fuller life, a greater appreciation for his creations, whether it be people, or the cosmos, oh and eternal life, not afraid of dying anymore. Where this blog goes from here is still unknown to me, won't be quite the same as I'm not quite the same, I'll still post some of my images, some reviews, who knows. Through it all God has placed key people in my life and even though it's quiet most times in my brightly lit command module their voices come through loud and clear on my com channel giving me words of encouragement and guidance, a lot have been my readers and I thank you for that, special mention to Astro- Nuts and Fishhawk who have been on the com almost daily.

"I felt that I was standing on a plateau, a plateau somewhere out there in space. A plateau that science and technology allowed me to get to but now what I was seeing, even more important, what I was feeling at that moment in time, science and technology had no answers for, literally no answers. Because there I was and there you are...there you are Earth, dynamic, overwhelming, and I felt that the world just...just too much purpose, too much logic, was just to beautiful to have happened by accident. There has to be somebody bigger then you and bigger then me and I mean this in a spiritual sense not a religious sense, there has to be a creator of the universe who stands above the religions that we ourselves create to govern our lives."

Eugene Cernan, Apollo 10&17, Last Man on the Moon.

I'll leave you now with my first Moon video taken years ago, kind of crude, but it shows that even though something that looks like it isn't going anywhere.... when you look up at the Moon for example.......well when you look real close, when you look under a magnifying glass, aka telescope at it you see nothing is constant, you see movement.

10 Free Astronomy Podcasts on iTunes

2010-02-18T06:41:00.017-06:00

Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to business School and who also writes about online degrees for OnlineDegreePrograms.org has once again offered her most excellent services, this time giving us 10 places to receive free podcasts from iTunes.

Have your iTunes application open before hand and then click on the below links which will then open up your iTunes store with the free astronomy podcast.

Listening to podcasts can be a great way to learn about anything while you are on the go. There are hundreds of astronomy-related podcasts that you can listen to and participate in online. Many of them are available for free through iTunes. Here are 10 to try in your spare time.

Astronomy Cast- Hosted by Dr. Pamela L. Gay of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Fraser Cain of Universe Today, Astronomy Cast is iTunes' most popular astronomy-related podcast. Most episodes focus on what is known about the universe and things that are still being discovered.

This Week In Space- This Week in Space is a new podcast that reports astronomy-related news. Episodes are hosted by Miles O'Brien, a journalist and member of the NASA Advisory Council.

NASACast- NASACast is a video podcast direct from NASA. Episodes focus on the latest astronomy news as well as current NASA missions.

Hubblecast- Hosted by Dr. Joe Liske, a German astronomer at the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), Hubblecast covers news about astronomy and the famed Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronomy.com- This weekly podcast from Astronomy Magazine reports up-to-date news and previews upcoming sky events.

Astronomy 141- Professor Richard Pogge of Ohio State University presents audio recordings of his lectures through this free podcast. Lectures are designed for non-science majors and explore life in the universe.

Naked Astronomy- Naked Astronomy is a relatively new podcast from the Naked Scientists, a group of physicians and researchers from Cambridge University. The podcast hosts explore a wide range of space science topics and conduct interviews with professional astronomers.

Slacker Astronomy- This podcast offers interesting interviews as well as news stories about astronomy and science. Slacker Astronomy also presents the occasional video on special topics.

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe- This weekly podcast features a discussion among five skeptics who cover everything from the paranormal to controversial claims--all from a scientific point of view.

Mysterious Universe- The Mysterious Universe podcasts covers the latest in science, technology, and astronomy with a strong emphasis on the strange, extraordinary, and just plain weird.

National Geographic Channel's "A Traveler's Guide to The Planets"

2010-02-10T05:52:00.008-06:00

Get ready with an out of this world journey to the planets with National Geographic Channel's "A Traveler's Guide To The Planets" a 3 day, 6 part mini series premiering Sunday February 14, a.k.a Valentines Day 9pm EDT. What better way to cap off an evening with that someone special then to tour Saturn and Jupiter.

Using a combination of the latest images taken with the biggest and best Earth telescopes and stunning CGI animations you'll navigate through Saturn's rings, tour it's surface and view it's amazing auroras, then it's on to Jupiter, dive below it's atmosphere which is so dense the pressure of which could crush a car into the size of a tin can. Jupiter the solar system's vacuum cleaner, with it's immence gravitational pull sucking in comets and asteroids that would otherwise pummel the Earth, without Jupiter they estimate we'd be hit by a comet every 50 years or so, life as we know it would not exist.

Monday, February 15, at 9pm EDT. Travel to Mars, Venus and Mercury. Did you know that 4.5 billion years ago Venus and Earth began as planetary twins, formed right next to each other, even exchanging materials, parts of Venus were falling on Earth and visa versa. You'll learn all kinds of cool things about these 3 planets, again the animations and visuals on the preview dvds were awesome.

Tuesday, February 16, at 9pm EDT. Last stops on our journey of the Planets, Neptune, Uranus and yes..little Pluto, still a planet in Bobland. You'll see stunning new pictures of these planets and visit the New Horizons control room where scientists are working with the first spacecraft to visit Pluto around 2015, just past Jupiter, 1979 more days to arrival at Pluto.

Unfortunately the mini series is only showing for now in the U.S. but as in past NGC space shows have come to Canada within 6-8 months through the Discovery and Canadian National Geographic Channels.. I will update you on this one either through my blog or my Facebook where I am spending some time at.

I'll leave you now with a preview clip of Saturn.

10 Places to Learn More about Astronomy Online

2009-11-21T16:44:00.027-06:00

You may remember a while back Karen Schweitzer did a guest post for Black holes called
"10 Places to get a Free Astronomy Education Online", well Karen, the About.com guide to Business School has offered her excellent services once again with suggestions for another 10 free places to learn of Astronomy online.

The web is a great place for amateur and experienced astronomers to learn more about stars, planets, comets, galaxies, and other celestial objects. Here are 10 free education resources that almost any astronomer will benefit from.

1. Astronomy.com - Astronomy, the world's bestselling astronomy magazine, also has a website with educational resources for astronomers of all ages. Only magazine subscribers can gain access to the site's premium features, but there are a number of free resources that are available to everyone.

2. Sky and Telescope - Sky and Telescope, another popular astronomy magazine, uses their online presence to provide astronomy news, highlights from the magazine, observation tips, and interactive sky charts. Other notable features include a site blog and community forum.

3. - KidsAstronomy - As the name implies, KidsAstronomy.com is an astronomy site for kids. The site offers a free astronomy course, sky map, astronomy games, activities, fun facts, and other resources to educate kids about outer space.

4. Windows to the Universe - This award-winning site from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research provides a user-friendly education system for anyone who is interested in learning more about earth and space sciences.

5. Astronomy Cast - This popular astronomy podcast is aimed at amateur astronomers, but also provides educational material for more advanced learners. Several new episodes are published each month and old episodes are archived so that listeners can review information they may have missed.

6. Astronomy Picture of the Day -NASA posts a new astronomy picture each day along with an explanation of what viewers are seeing. Old pictures (dating back to 1995) have been archived so that site visitors can explore images they may have missed.

7. Sky View Cafe - Sky View Cafe is a free web application that offers an astronomical event calendar, star charts, and other useful astronomical information. Users can also use Sky View Cafe to see which stars and planets will be viewable in their area each night.

8. Stellarium - This free multi-platform software displays a realistic night sky in 3D on your computer screen. It can also be used in planetarium projectors.

9. Your Sky - This interactive web planetarium allows users to create personalized sky maps that show the entire sky as it looks at a particular day and time.

10. My Online Astronomy Journal - My Online Astronomy Journal is a community based website for amateur astronomers who want to record their observations and share them with other people. Membership is free and open to everyone.

Thanks again Karen for taking the time to put together this collection of great Astronomy links, and thanks to everybody who took time to comment on my last post and send me encouraging emails of support, also Astro-Nuts for showing me a major signpost.

I had mentioned on my last post I was taking some time off to look for my next signpost to guide me to get to where I need to be, since then I have found many, and many have helped, and I thank you all. When all seems lost and nothing seems right it's good to know that Christ our Savior is always there to get us through, 1Peter 5:7-11, some verses I found when I really needed them most.

ps, see you in Vancouver in December Livingsword

Last Post .......for a while

2009-10-01T16:15:00.006-05:00

So I was driving down a dark country road, I had just been out in the afternoon to scout out a location in the country to view a Moon and Pleiades conjunction. Always easier to find a new location during the day then head back out at night.

I was driving what seemed like forever looking for the turnoff that would get me to the place I needed to be but I couldn't find it, must have missed it, but how could I have, I thought there was a sign, did I drive by it? I started getting a little anxious, was I on the right road, the millage was off compared to what it was the first time out, drove what seemed like forever, pulled over and turned around and headed back towards safety and home. Wasn't more then just a few minutes and straight head a sign I was looking for pointed me in the right direction, wow talk about being relieved.

Took my images packed my stuff away and started home... true story, as I was heading home a car came towards me with his brights on, as I looked away I noticed in my rear view mirror the sign, all big, green and shiny and I thought to myself how on earth did I miss it?

Life can be that way sometimes, always easy to see clearly when looking back at stuff then it is when your in the middle of it. I will be away for awhile looking for my next signpost but this time not fretting about the destination. I want to thank all of you who have given me so much encouragement the last couple years with your kind comments, we've laughed, we've cried, mostly laughed though and I treasure every last moment we've shared.

I thought my latest Sunset clip would be fitting for my "Last Post...for a while". With every Sunset there is a Sunrise, and with it a new day with new hopes and aspirations...so no goodbyes...just good memories.

Daytime Moon and Zodiacal Light

2009-09-07T09:42:00.015-05:00

Wife: Whatcha up to?

Me: Looking at a daytime crescent Moon...just above that tree over there..see it?

Wife: .......No.

Me: Okay, look at the top of that pine over there and then a little to the left...see it?

Wife: .......No.

Me: Alright watch where I'm pointing, the Moon is sitting on top of my finger....see it?

Wife: .........If I say yes will you stop?

This conversation actually took place, the daytime crescent Moon can be a hard target to find but boy is it worth it, looks so majestic in the daytime.

If you're interested you can go here to see the current phase of the Moon and go here to find out where it is. I eventually set up the telescope and took some images for her to see later, which I don't think she did, but hey if she reads the post she will.

Just a reminder, in the early morning hours of this coming Thursday the Moon and Pleiades will be in conjunction, but you can enjoy the coupling late Wednesday evening, just grab some binocs, find the Moon then just off to the left will be the Pleiades, granted you won't have me to point them out to you but you should be good to go on your own.

Zodiacal Light ..credit The Worlds Of David Darling

Mark September 16th. on your calender for an awesome showing of the Slim Crescent Moon, Venus, and...and, the Zodiacal Light, triple whammy. The Zodiacal light will be putting on quite the show for a few days beyond the 16th., until the Moon gets brighter and takes away it's cool soft glow.

First you have to get up a couple hours before Sunrise, leave the glare of the city lights, and look to the east. You will see a faint triangle of light rising up from the horizon, very beautiful. The Zodiacal light is the result of Sunlight reflecting off dust particles left behind by comets and collisions between asteroids, best seen the beginning of fall before Sunrise in the east and spring after Sunset in the west. You may or may not know that the Zodiacal light is responsible for 60% of the skylight on a moonless night.

I'll leave you now with an animation of a Sunset I took a week ago.

10 Places to Get a Free Astronomy Education Online

2009-09-02T16:31:00.013-05:00

Old Shanghai Observatory Star Theater

Something special and new for you this this time round. Karen Schweitzer will be doing a guest post. Karen is the About.com guide to Business School. Karen also writes reviews of Online Colleges for OnlineColleges.net. There is some great stuff here, I have reviewed all the links Karen has provided and have actually printed some of the study materials down to read and incorporate in future posts, take it away Karen.

Whether you are a beginning astronomer or a professional who is interested in learning more about a specific topic, there are plenty of places to get a free astronomy education online. Here are ten courses, podcasts, encyclopedias, and other education resources to explore:

Introduction to Astronomy- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers this free course to introduce self-learners to astronomy. The course includes readings, study materials, assignments, and quizzes with an answer key.

Elementary Astronomy- This free online course from the College of Eastern Utah focuses on the formation and existence of the sun, moon, planets, stars, and comets. The course includes 38 pages of informative handouts with illustrations.

Astronomy 101- The About.com Guide to Astronomy offers this free online course to self-learners who are interested in learning the basics of astronomy. The 10-lesson course includes an assignment, links to more in-depth information, a final quiz, and forums where students can ask questions. A certificate is awarded to those who finish the course.

Hands-On Astronomy- This free online astronomy course from MIT focuses on observing stars and planets. The course teaches students how to use small telescopes with lecture notes and other self-study materials.

Old Shanghai Observatory Star Theater

The Solar System- This free online course, also from MIT, provides an introduction to the solar system. Students learn about the formation and life of the solar system through assignments, fact sheets, and other course materials.

Essential Radio Astronomy- This advanced-level astronomy course was designed for students who already have some knowledge of astronomy. The text-based course includes problems sets and exams with solutions.

Weekly Astronomy Podcast- Astronomy magazine's free weekly podcast is an excellent educational resource for astronomy enthusiasts. Episodes include astronomy news, information on upcoming sky events, and much more.

Astronomy Network- The Astronomy Network is a social network for astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts. The site is a great place to learn more about astronomy online through discussions, blog posts, and videos.

World Of Astronomy- World of Astronomy is a comprehensive online encyclopedia of astronomy topics. Visitors can learn more about galactic astronomy, observational astronomy, the solar system, stars, and much more.

Ask An Astronomer- Volunteers at Cornell University's Astronomy Department offer this free public service to people around the world who are interested in astronomy. You can browse previously asked questions or submit your own question to be answered by one of the graduate students at Cornell.

Thank you Karen, with all the information out there it's nice to have an expert do the research on where to get stuff. I'll leave you now with an animation of the Greater Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an China, built in 652 it was used to hold sutras and figurines that were brought back from India by Xuanzang

Moon, Pleiades and the Perseids

2009-08-29T01:16:00.015-05:00

As far as I'm concerned there is nothing more pretty then a celestial gathering of the Moon and Pleiades.

We just had one August 14. Next groupings of the two are September 10, October 7, November 3, and December 1, do yourself a favor and look at the pairing on one of these nights using binoculars.

If you're so inclined just email me and I'll tell you where and when to look, you won't regret it. I think I can almost see the usefulness of tweeter in a case like this, might learn how to tweet to give you a reminder.

What can I say, the Perseid meteor shower this year was probably the best shower I've seen in years. I missed the peak night due to clouds but was lucky enough to get some clear skies the following night, I later found out that this particular shower had 3 peaks, which is unusual, this year we happened through 3 distinct concentrated dust trails left behind by comet Swift Tuttle. The tiny dust particles aka meteoroids create the meteors aka falling stars we see by burning up through friction as they enter our atmosphere.

Was treated to around 30 an hour and 5 fireballs, but the real cool thing was I didn't watch it alone. As I was pulling up to my regular viewing spot I noticed a car parked, as I got closer I noticed a couple people in it, a Mother and son. They had heard about the event, believe it or not, not through my blog but through a local radio station, they decided to venture out to see their first ever meteor shower, the looks on their faces when the first fireball came along was more exciting to me then the fireball itself. They had lots of questions and I did my best to answer them and at the end of the day they went away a little more in tune with the cosmos, a very special night for us all.

Next major shower are the Orionids, peaking October 21. Look to the South East at the Constellation Orion around 10:00 pm for the show to start.

Expect around 20 or so an hour. They are generally small, fast and have a slight color to them as in the above image I took last year. Notice the bright Moon, it took away a lot of the contrast so I was only able to spot the very bright meteors, not to worry, this year the Moon will be coming off it's new Moon stage and will have set by that time leaving us a dark sky in which to pick off even the faintest of meteors.

I'll leave you with an animation of a bamboo forest just outside of Shanghai.

Shanghai...The Solar Eclipse

2009-08-22T16:52:00.051-05:00

The night we arrived in Shanghai we were treated to an awesome lightning show. I took the image above from the balcony of my hotel suite the eve of the Total Solar Eclipse, with a grim weather forecast for eclipse day my thought was if I wasn't going to be imaging the eclipse, I might as well get some lightning shots.

Didn't get much sleep, up at 4:00 am organizing my equipment, then at t-90 minutes and counting to the eclipse I ventured out to find a spot I would be viewing it from. The tour organizers had paid extra for us to have a place on the hotel terrace to view the event, but after I walked along the China Sea beach that morning, I knew this was the place for me, ended up being a great decision.

Met all kinds of people from different countries, was filmed by a Beijing TV crew and saw lots of ghost like Junk ships on the China Sea , they seemed to disappear then reappear from behind pockets of mist and smog, very creepy cool , and the people,

People in awe,

Amazed people,

Cheering people.

Just before the eclipse started the clouds broke a little, enough so that we were able to view a partial eclipse, everybody cheered.

Our tour guide was kind enough to let me use his phone, I regularly called updates of the event into the CNN live crew. A CNN producer read my blog about me getting my first passport just to go see the eclipse in China. She emailed me and asked if I wanted to do an interview as well as do regular call ins to update CNN of the progress of the eclipse in Shanghai, I said sure, who wouldn't,very cool.

Saw it get dark,

Darker,

Darkest......... all within a matter of minutes. So let me sum this up for you. I am in Shanghai on the China Sea beach, watching ghostly Junks float by, with people all around me watching my every move, on the phone with a producer from CNN giving her live updates on the Solar Eclipse I was viewing and imaging, oh and earlier was filmed by a Beijing TV crew for their nightly news... I remember thinking at the time that even my dreams don't get this good.

Just after totality it started to rain and some friends from my tour group helped me carry my equipment to the hotel, it was over , at least for us in Shanghai, an experience I will never forget and even to this day can't believe I was actually a part of.

The next day we visited the Old Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.

Our last major event on the tour was a visit to the 88th floor, the observation deck of the Jin Mao Tower, what a view of Shanghai,

All good things must come to an end but the memories and experiences I have gathered will never fade away, I took more then 1200 images and 6 hours of video to make sure they don't. Taking this trip to China was so not like me, being a claustrophobic fear of flying introvert, just goes to show you that fears can be conquered....... with the want and a lot of willpower.

I even learned a few words in Chinese, one phrase I remember is "Xie xie" pronounced "Sheh sheh" in English, means "Thank you", I use it when ever I buy Chinese food now, whenever I use the phrase the surprised look I get from the person behind the counter, and then they started talking back to me in Chinese, then I explained I don't know any other words, they look confused, I explain about my trip, they smile and I really got to stop doing that, but it is fun.

I look back on this adventure with fond memories, the kindness of the Chinese people, their vast and rich history, seeing the great Wall for the first time from a plane, touching and smelling the clay that the Terra-Cotta army was made from, all something one doesn't soon forget.

I'll leave you with a video I took from the observation floor of the Jin Mao Tower. Note that at 1:20 into the video I cut in a Mission Impossible III scene, in the bottom of the four tower images I took above, the tall round building and the slanted roof building next to it are involved.

Two New NGC Premieres, Ride Of a Lifetime and Gumby

2009-08-18T15:15:00.037-05:00

I'm going to take another break before I wrap up my China adventures to tell you of a couple of National Geographic Channel premieres coming this Sunday August 23rd at 9 and 10 pm EDT.

First off at 9:00 pm EDT Alien Earths. Join a team of astronomers and leading scientists in the search for alien earths, another place we could call home. So far they have discovered around 350 planets, all of which you wouldn't want to live on. too hot, too cold, oceans filled with gas ect. With the aid of CGI animations you'll journey to these unbelievably strange and odd worlds, the stuff of sci fi. You'll also see what they are doing to hunt for worlds much like our own using Kepler, the first spacecraft of it's type able to discover earth size and smaller planets capable of supporting life as we know it. Of all the strange planets and oddities you'll discover my favorite is the Planemo, a poor little planet that has been thrown out of it's solar system into space. It wanders in the darkness of space, looking for a new home. I'm surprised no sci fi shows or books have been done using the Planemo as a story line, work with me on this one people.

A little planet gets the boot from it's solar system through a freak of gravity of a larger planet, gets captured by another system, maybe even a double star system, the planet develops a highly intelligent life form capable of light speed and they hear through the space grapevine a planet is being invaded by beings from the same planet that jostled them out of their solar system millions of years before, the planet being invaded is Earth. They come, rid us of the invading aliens and give us the technology to build holodecks.

Next at 10:00 pm EDT Hawking's Universe. Stephen Hawking is probably one of the most famous scientists in the word and you'll learn a little of his early life before he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, meet his daughter, find out some of his major contributions to the field of astrophysics and learn of his quest to find the theory of everything. His goal in life, and I quote, "My goal is simple, it is the complete understanding of the universe, why it exists the way it is and why it exists at all". Hawking first put forth the theory that black holes are not completely black, that they give off radiation and are slowly evaporating through radiation, what we call "Hawking Radiation", named after him. His theory says that just before it goes into nothingness it gives off energy, depending on the size of the black hole, unspeakable energy, is this what caused the Big Bang? The preview dvds I received look real good, something you won't want to miss, again this Sunday starting at 9:00 pm EDT. Unfortunately these programs are only available in the US. Previous NGC shows I have mentioned here are slowly making their way to Canada through the Canadian Discovery HD Channel and the Canadian NGC, if you live in Canada just keep an eye open for them on those channels.

Now, I'd like to leave you with a video I took on my adventure in China, it is a ride on the Maglev, the worlds fastest railway in commercial use. We took the Maglev from the financial district in Shanghai to Shanghai's Pudong Airport, WOW, what a blast!! The 30 km distance took less then 7 minutes to cover, top speed 431 km and hour. Note at five and a half minutes into the ride a Maglev going in the opposite direction passes within feet of us scaring the crap out of me and a traveling partner, also notice at seven and a half minutes into the ride you'll see the Shanghai's 2010 World Expo mascot "Haibao". I'm thinking he looks a lot like Gumby, everybody thought I was crazy, especially the people that asked what a Gumby was, what do you think?

Real Gumby.

Haibao(Gumby wannabe).

The Terra-Cotta Army

2009-08-11T17:16:00.029-05:00

Often referred to as the eighth wonder of the world the Terra-Cotta Army, dating back to 210 BC was built to help the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang rule in the afterlife.

It is estimated that more then 700,000 laborers and craftsmen manufactured the estimated 9,000 soldiers, chariots and horses.

So far 3 main pits have been discovered; Pit 1 and the largest, the top 2 images above, contains the main army; Pit 2 the next largest and the image above contained specialized troops such as archers.

Pit 3 , the smallest of the three was the troop command center.

The army was discovered by some local farmers digging for water back in 1974 when they came across some pottery pieces, the rest is history. For a donation you can get a founding farmer to, (get it, founding farmer, just made that up right now), sign your Terra-Cotta Army book and then they will allow you to take their picture as well, one of the farmers is signing my book in the image above, very cool.

Before the Terra-Cotta Army there was a small village and Pomegranate growing fields. The villagers have all been relocated and a small tourist town now occupies the land.

The museum is just outside of Xi'an (pronounced she anne) China and receives 2 million tourists and visitors annually, the Queen Of England, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and me to name a few.

Our tour guide told us a couple interesting tidbits of info, a local person dressed up like a warrior and hid down amongst the figures, he managed to pull it off for quite awhile until someone saw him move and he was arrested, also apparently they had put a halt to the excavating because the warriors after being restored were losing their color, they have now figured out how to prevent that from happening and had just started to excavate a month before I arrived.

Besides soldiers, chariots and horses a large assortment of real armor, weapons, rare animal and bird figures and various types of pottery have been uncovered, as well as mass burial graves.

To keep the tomb a secret hundreds of officials and craftsmen involved in it's construction were buried alive with the dead Emperor. Just to the southwest of the mausoleum 42 mass graves have been uncovered, a lot of good the burying alive thing did, just 5 years after the Emperor's death General Xiang and his army looted and burned the Emperor's tomb destroying the Terra-Cotta Army.

The figures were created using molds and local clay heated to between 950 and 1050 degrees Celsius. The heads were made with 2 piece molds with the eyes, ears, mouth and hair added after to give each warrior their own individual look, actually there are some experts that say that real soldiers were used as models. I was so fascinated with that idea that I took a bunch of images using my telephoto lens, and they are all different, at least the images I collected, just think, when you are looking at the images below you could be looking into the face of someone that was an actual warrior back in the day!

I'll leave you with a video I took of the unforgettable event, notice at the beginning of the video I was told no pictures, still you can see the farmer signing some books before I turned off the camera, once inside the pits I was allowed to image again, but boy was it packed, had to push and shove my way into the front area, you can see where I almost lost my footing on a slope, all the area I could find to take pictures at the time, was also very hot, reached 40 c that day and wasn't much cooler in the building, very humid, you could smell the clay, added to the whole adventure.

Also look to the North East after darkness falls tonight , just under the W of Cassiopeia for the peak of the Perseid Meteor shower, could see as high as 40 meteors an hour, I'll be out trying to image them, should be a fairly good show.

Tank Man and The "F" Word

2009-08-06T12:02:00.045-05:00

My third day in China was very busy. We visited the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and Kunming Lake. Let me see, so far I have been frisked by a security guard in Vancouver, saw 2 people being whisked away in the Beijing airport to awaiting medical tents and medical personnel, got lost in the Beijing airport, was contacted by CNN for an interview, conquered my fear of flying and climbed the Great Wall of China, what a frigging adventure!!!

Our first stop was the gardens surrounding The Temple Of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was constructed from 1406 to 1420 and visited annually by Emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties to pray for good harvests. Music and activities were everywhere.

I love traditional Chinese music, love the tones and shapes of their instruments, I recorded some musical shorts on video and posted it at the end of this post.

Along with the music there was Chinese Shuttlecock,

and Tai Chi going on.

One of my goals, besides viewing the eclipse, climbing the Great wall, oh yeah and seeing the Terra Cotta Warriors was to get me and a friend fake Rolex Watches, as well as pick me up a "I Climbed The Great Wall" t shirt, well I got my shirt the day before and the Rolex watches that day and had my first experience with the local street vendors, they are everywhere and there are some good deals to be had if you know how to barter.

Since you can't actually go inside the Temple I leaned over the railing to get a shot of the beautiful ceiling work.

After the temple it was off to Tiananmen Square, the largest urban square in the world.

I gotta say our tour guide was very knowledgeable, a walking wikipedia on the history of Beijing, mention anything he always had a answer that usually went on and on and on so much so my brain started to hurt with way too much information,Temple this, Dynasty that, but mention..."Tank Man"..................................................................................................................................
......................................................................ribbit............................................................., silence fell, now from what I've been told, there have been major advancements in the personal freedoms and choices of the Chinese peoples over the last several years but there is still one major topic or taboo that no one is allowed to talk about and that is the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Our tour guide either skirted or changed the subject every time I brought it up, there is no information on the subject over there, for some strange reason I thought there would be an X marking the spot or some kind of monument, seems the government is trying to either delete or re-write that part of their history. When I asked "can you at least point to the approximate area where it happened?" he hesitated then slowly pointed straight ahead down by the trees and and lamp posts on the image below. The avenue it occurred on, and you can see cars in the image below traveling on it is called Chang'an, it runs between Tiananmen Square and the entrance to the Forbidden City. Even today Freight trucks are not allowed to use the road and no commercial advertising is allowed within 100 metres of the street.

The government blocked twitter, blogger and even hotmail due to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, control the information flow, control the people.

That night I was watching the BBC news in my hotel room, they were reporting on a group of teenage students that were just quarantined at the Beijing Hospital, the reporter was saying the hospital was taking good care of them and that they were all having a great time, as he was reporting the camera was zooming in on the group about 30 or so yards away from the camera, behind a shoulder length chain link fence they were waving and smiling away to the reporters......., just kind of seemed a little staged, maybe not, maybe they were having a great time....behind the chain link fence.

This whole H1N1 thing brings up another question, the "F" word, what do the locals do if they feel a fever coming on? Do they sweat it out in hopes it's nothing too serious or do they pack their bags and expect to be away for a couple weeks? I asked the guide about this as well, he just laughed and said no problem, stay at home til better. The person sitting next to me on the plane was heading to Beijing from Vancouver to visit his family. I asked him how he felt about the virus and the quarantine, he said, China was a big place , lots of people and the government had to be careful.... that was it, then he went back to playing video games, he brought his laptop and was playing some cool space shooting game, and was actually very good, I dropped some hints about taking a turn, I even fixed his adapter for him so he could run it off the plane's electricity and said things like "cool game", and "how many lives do you have left", "I have a PS3" but he didn't take the hints, so I went back to watching "The Man From Planet X".

From Tiananmen square we entered The Forbidden City, 980 buildings and 8,700 rooms.
The Forbidden City was the imperial palace to the Ming and Qing dynasties, was built between 1406 and 1420 and was called forbidden because no one was allowed to enter or leave without the Emperor's permission. Such a huge place with magnificent buildings, again we did a lot of walking around, they kept it very clean, as we were waiting the hour it took for our guide to get through the lines to get tickets I got a picture of a cleaner and his cool witch type broom.

Kunming lake and the Summer Palace were our last stops that day. Once a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi, (Qing Dynasty) it is now a beautiful resort and lake for all to enjoy.

We also took a boat ride across the lake.

and saw some kites.

I'll leave you now with a video of some musical shorts, first a musical selection from the Tang Dynasty show I saw in Xian, then a quick change mask artist, some music from the park, a short of a singer from our Beijing hotel lobby and to end it off an actor from a play I saw, "The Legend Of Kung Fu" hitting a fish drum, fish never close their eyes, well they can't, therefore they are a symbol to monks to remain ever vigilant like them, next stop the Terracotta Warriors.

The Great Wall Of China

2009-08-02T09:42:00.015-05:00

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man" Mao Zedong

Well it's official......I am now a true man....for I have climbed the Great Wall Of China, and what an experience!!!!!

The building of sections of the great wall started way back in the 7th century BC, built by individual states to protect their borders from other would be invading peoples, it wasn't until the first emperor of China, Qin (pronounced chin, and where China got it's name) Shi Huang decided to combine all the walls in 221 BC in an effort to keep out invading Xiongnu from the north. His General Meng Tian used a labour force of three hundread thousand soldiers, as well as criminals, civil servants and conscripts to combine the individual walls and to build additional.

The wall is now around 8,800 km long. Built between the 7th century BC and the 16th century AD, it required a workforce of millions and at it's peak during the Ming Dynasty was guarded by a million soldiers.

Our tour group was taken to the Badaling portion of the wall, just north of Beijing, Bada means giving access to every direction, it was apparently a very strategic point in the wall. First constructed in 1505 by the Ming Dynasty, it is 7.8 meters high and is wide enough for 10 people to walk along abreast or 5 horses or 5 people with umbrellas as it was raining as we were touring.

Try to sneak through the small guard house openings with a bunch of other people with umbrellas, actually had my umbrella ripped from my hand by a couple people's umbrellas as they were squeezing by me, so here I was holding a camcorder in one hand a camera wrapped around my neck, a telephoto lens in my side pocket chasing down my umbrella.... I don't even like or use umbrellas, but had to keep the rain off my lens somehow, hard to keep track of everything and still take pictures of the momentous occasion.

I would stop every once in a while to touch and smell the wall and look through the tiny peepholes and imagined how it would have been back then fending off invading forces. The majesty and immenseness of the wall, what a feat of engineering to build such a landmark, the loss of life just in building the wall reaching into the millions, many were buried in the wall itself.

It finally stopped raining and left cool atmospheric clouds cutting across the distant wall and landscape, very cool effect. You notice how the wall seems to wind across the hills forever like a dragon. Dragons mean a lot to the Chinese people. A Dragon is a power of good. They fend off evil spirits, bring prosperity, good fortune and symbolise greatness, goodness and many blessings.

One thing you notice real fast is you do a lot of climbing, to get to the top of the section we were on takes a little under an hour, good thing it was cooler then it would have been if not for the rain, you get a real work out, but looking down from the top is an experience you will never forget. One thing I did is take a video of a walkthrough of the Great wall, just to give you an idea of the sights and sounds I experienced that day

Time went by way too fast before you knew it we were down and done and heading off to our next adventure on the tour, but all good things must come to an end, as did the military usefulness of the wall, it had it's time but the high cost of manning and maintaining it became too much, along with internal power struggles. A border General unhappy with his superiors let in the Manchus in 1644 to invade Beijing, overthrow the short lived Shun Dynasty and starting the Qing Dynasty.

The Galileoscopes Have Arrived

2009-07-30T03:04:00.008-05:00

I am going to take a break from my China stories to bring you all an important announcement, I got my Galileoscopes in today and I gotta say I'm quite impressed. The image above was taken with my Canon 40D attached to the scope, not bad for a fifteen dollar investment.

I blogged about the scope once before here and said that to celebrate my daughter's wedding I would be giving 3 away. What I did is put the names on a piece of paper, threw them all up in the air and then just picked three off the floor at random, bet you never thought of that , if nothing else I'm original, more on the winners later.

First thing you notice about the scope is, that it is a kit , you have to put it together, lots of pieces, having said that it is not too hard to figure out, it comes with instructions even though I would have liked to have seen them more clear and detailed, like numbering all the parts at the start and then listing the number on the assembled drawing, I was left with a couple O rings that I still don't know where they fit, oh well that happens a lot to me and instructions.

This is critical... the foam enclosed objective lens, that is your main lens that fits in the front of the scope also contains your small lenses for your eyepieces. After I had put the scope together I started to put together the eyepieces and it was explaining how to assemble them but I couldn't find the lenses, looked high and low, went through all my packaging and bags then after what seemed like forever I thought I would check out the foam the objective lens came in, and sure enough they were there, they are so small and sandwiched between two pieces of thin foam taped to the side of the main objective foam that they got lost in the shuffle.

After I got the scope together which takes about fifteen minutes to a half an hour, I pointed it at the Moon, very good detail, again this only cost fifteen bucks, can't go wrong with that kind of investment, plus the learning experience you'll get while putting it together, again well worth the money and time spent.

I also pointed it at Jupiter and was able to see great detail and its four brightest moons even from my backyard. You will need to invest in a tripod, doesn't come with, I used my camera tripod to mount the telescope which worked very well. Overall a great buy and sure to increase the public's awareness and appreciation of the night sky, see what Galileo saw, he had the same type and size of scope. If you head over to the Galileoscope web site they have some cool downloads like observing and optics activity guides, bonus.

And now for the winners:

Congratulations to all the winners,I know you will enjoy and put to good use this little scope.

I'll leave you now with a instructional video on how to put the Galileoscope together, something I probably should have watched.

Darkness Falls On Shanghai

2009-07-26T22:14:00.017-05:00

I'm back and what an experience visiting China has been. Initially I decided to go because of the Solar eclipse, it didn't take long before I was forgetting what the main focus was as well as what it was slowly becoming, a sensory delight.

Touching the Great Wall Of China, smelling incense in the Jade Buddha Temple, walking in the Forbidden City seeing up close and personal the Terra -Cotta Warriors and hearing the chatter of a thousand voices in Tiananmen Square on a Saturday. I took the above image while our tour driver was taking a shortcut down the back-roads where the common people live, shot through the window, says a lot, a part of China we never toured but through the lens I was able to capture a moment in time.

Coming into China is an eyeopener. Right off the plane you follow signs that have arrows and say baggage, they basically just guide you to numerous checkpoints where you will be asked a series of questions and asked to show your passport, oh, and walk through a temperature sensor. Not once but twice the person right in front of me was whisked away to a waiting tent and to what looked like health officials, probably checking for signs of the H1N1 virus. She was with a group of teenagers, they reassured her they would wait, I never saw the group from then on.

There are numerous guards that line "baggage lane",(as I like to call it). they're just off to the side, and everyone is wearing protective masks, very intimidating to say the least. At the final checkpoint, there was a yellow line where you had to stop before you proceeded through to be asked the same questions and once again show your passport and go through another temperature sensor, I guess I was a little over the yellow line and a security/police/army type scary guy with a mask rushes in and shouts something in Chinese and pushes me back.......well I didn't know whether to shit, salute, or go into shock, come to think of it I probably did a little of each, now don't forget I had just come off an eleven hour fight from Vancouver, I wasn't a happy camper or feeling 100%, couple that with the fact that I was one of the lucky ones to be selected for a pat down at the Vancouver International Airport Security Check-In , and I mean pat down, hands down the back and front of my pants, told to assume the position and checked again, at least he thanked me for my cooperation.

After the final checkpoint you see another baggage sign with an arrow pointing to an escalator, you take this down, not to your waiting baggage but to a train station where you wait for a train that will take you to another building to finally get your baggage, congrats you pass and don't go to quarantine.

Then there is the matter of blocked social networking sites, stuff we take for granted like blogger and twitter. Another reminder that Bob wasn't in Kansas anymore. Of course this story has a happy ending , I made it home alive and well, the planes didn't crash and burn, I no longer have a fear of flying and I had a most excellent adventure. I even got lost in Shanghai while traveling down some back roads, finally got my bearings and made it back to the hotel.... again adding to the adventure.

I have lots of stories waiting to be told. I took over 1,200 images and 6 hours of video, but for now I will leave you with a video I took of the blackness that fell on Shanghai during the Total Solar Eclipse, we didn't get to see actual totality but we did experience the premature night fall which was quite the experience in itself.

Total Solar Eclipse In Shanghai (well, not quite total)

2009-07-22T09:27:00.005-05:00

I have heard from Bob again. He got a couple of good Partial Eclipse images before it clouded over.

Here is part of the email he wrote to me -

"Colin it has been amazing here. So many stories to tell and pics to show but internet time is hard to get and I'm very busy and of course I can't get blogger here. At least we weren't totally blocked out with clouds and was able to get some partial eclipse pics before it totally clouded over, very super cool, and the sky went black like night for 5 minutes. Had people lined up to see my images and then thanking me. Chinese people are very polite, met lots of interesting people during the eclipse. I got a super video of the darkness and the reaction of the people around me when it happened which I will post when I get home."

Bob made the CNN website. He was a contact person in Shanghai and called them every 30 minutes or so to let them know how it was going. Here is a link to the CNN article. The CNN producer saw his website and emailed him to see if he'd be interested in doing an interview. How could he refuse?

"I have lots of stories and images to share when I get back, an experience of a lifetime! Bob"

On behalf of Bob, take care everyone, Astro-Nuts

Bob has landed in China

2009-07-17T13:24:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone. My name is Colin (better known as Astro-Nuts). Bob and I try to get out with our cameras frequently. We went meteorite hunting as well. Anyway, enough about me. After all, this is Bob's blog. Bob asked me to post for him as he is unable to from China. I will try to keep you updated as I hear from him. Here is part of an email he sent me yesterday -

"I can't do posting, things we take for granted like social networking can't do in china, can't even bring up my blog. Had to pinch myself to see if i was dreaming when walking on the Great Wall. I took a video of a small walk through which I will post when I get back, so much to see and do, only had a couple hours sleep since I arrived. The whole reason i came to China was for the Total Solar Eclipse....that has now become secondary, sure I hope it is clear skies, but the whole experience of being in China is really quite remarkable and worth the trip in itself.

Bob"

New Sun Spots and New National Geographic Channel Premier, "Living On The Moon"

2009-07-09T07:09:00.014-05:00

Finally our sun seems to be coming back to life. The sun goes through an 11 year cycle where it waxes and wanes with solar activity. The sun has been stuck in the waning phase for an extended period and up until a month or so ago solar physicists didn't really know why.

Seems a slower then usual moving solar jet stream associated with sunspot production thousands of miles below the sun's surface has finally reached a critical 22 degree latitude of the sun and with it new cycle sunspots.

Got a call from Spaceweather PHONE last Sunday, July 5 informing me of a huge Sunspot taking place and got lucky with a break in the clouds to capture some of the solar action.

The image above is active region 1024 starting to disappear by July 6. They expect upwards of 90 sunspots to occur daily at solar maximum sometime in 2013.

National Geographic Channel is celebrating the 40 th. anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing with a new premier,
"Living On The Moon". The show will be aired Sunday July 19, 9 pm EDT, a day before the actual anniversary of July 20.

See inside NASA's Constellation program which will take 4 astronauts to the Moon's south pole as early as 2020, only this time round our long term goal is to stay and set up base.

Using 3D animations you'll watch as the initial lonely outpost expands to a lunar city by 2050 and a tourist resort by the middle of the twenty first century.

To be able to survive and flourish on the moon we'll have to harness the lunar resources from turning moon rock into water to eventually exporting lunar produced solar energy to our earth, very interesting concepts and one of NGC's best premiers.

This will be my last post before I leave for China next Wednesday. I will post if I am able, if not see you when I get back July 28. I'll leave you now with a video of the Constellation program from launch to splashdown.

UFO In China

2009-07-03T12:57:00.009-05:00

A funny thing happened to me on the way to my daughter's wedding, well the morning there of to be more precise. I was out at 3:00 am June 20 to try and capture a Lunar, Venus and Mars conjunction, of course as usual clouds got in the way, but I got the coolest looking lens flare I'd ever seen, looked like a UFO. Think of the possibilities!!

Voila..... using photoshop's blending feature and a few keystrokes you have a distant alien planet with a UFO appearing out of the glare of one of it's Suns, at least that's what I see. I've been keeping myself amused doing different combos with some of my existing images and my new favorite UFO pic, doesn't take much for me to be amused.

Brings me to my next point, you know I'll be leaving for China a week from this coming Wednesday and you can bet there will be some cool combos to be had, how bout a UFO over the Great Wall, or a UFO in Tiananmen Square, where will it show up?

Email me where you believe it will show up and if you are right or the closest to the first combo I publish, you will get one of the Galileoscopes I will be giving away, ( I won't look at the emails till after I publish my combo). If you enter this email contest and don't win, no worries, your name will still be put in the draw for one of the other two I will be giving away.

Eleven days and twenty one hours as of this writing to my leaving on a jet plane to China to view the Total Solar Eclipse of July 22 2009. It is getting more official, I just got my tour package in the mail, and....and...... I got a cool name tag, always wanted one of them.

I will probably post one more time before I leave and then while I am there I will try to post as often as possible just to prove I'm actually there, believe it or not I'm still getting the odd naysayer that asks me if I'm really going or if I have chickened out yet.

I have been doing a lot of research on the weather conditions over in China right now and came across the above Satellite image through NASA's Earth Observatory, if you are concerned with global climate change you should check it out. It's mission, "To share with the public the images, stories and discoveries about climate and the environment that emerge from NASA's research, including it's satellite missions, in the field research and climate models". The image above shows a major tropical storm that occurred last week off mainland China producing 8 casualties and 11 people missing. Other then that it has been mostly sunny and hot in Shanghai, where I will be viewing the eclipse from, here's hoping it stays that way.

I'll leave you now with one of my UFO combos animated, hey I got a million of them, even got a cool combo with a UFO over my cat's head.

Arrival

2009-06-26T16:50:00.019-05:00

Just got my latest edition of Meteorite Magazine and there were some interesting facts in it about the Buzzard Coulee Meteorite, so I thought I would add some of my interesting Microscopic meteorite pics to the fold to better illustrate what I'd like say in this post.

You may know that back on November 20 of last year a 10 tonne meteoroid collided with our Earth's atmosphere over Saskatchewan creating temperatures as hot as the Sun, exploding with the force of 300 tonnes of TNT and witnessed by 1000's from British Columbia to Manitoba, what we have come to know as the Buzzard Coulee Meteorite. What you may not know is that 12 other fireballs were spotted across the globe that same night from Florida to Scotland.........coincidence?........perhaps, but how do you explain the above suspicious looking alien monitoring device thingy with an arrow, probably pointing to a landing site?

On the opposite side of the suspect bug,(image above), was another suspicious looking item, kinda like a telecommunication Fiber Optic strand, image below.

Or how bout the microscopic image below of Martian Meteorite NWA 4925, hey look at where it joins the meteorite, such fine alien craftsmanship.

Or how bout the image below , a 2 parter of another suspect fiber from Martian Meteorite DAG 476. People..... look at it, it's in the shape of an ear, those crazy Martians, they're messing with us, leaving all kinds of clues thinking no one is going to be wacky enough to figure them out.

When I first opened up the package of my Buzzard Coulee meteorite I commented on a post it smelt like space....the more I think of it , it may have smelt like burnt electronics....interesting.

Finally the microscopic image above of Martian meteorite LA 002. This has all been in fun, thought I better add that since in real life people don't know if I'm joking or not, I am joking around, just in case you think I'm nuts, well yes I am, but I really don't believe that is a cucumber above.

Apparently I wasn't the only person to smell the meteorite, there were 3 other reported incidences of odd smells, but during the fall, also one reported case of heat. Someone felt heat on the side of their face and then turned in the direction of the heat to catch the fireball.

Lots of reports of sounds of the fireball crashing through our atmosphere, as far away as Avonlea Saskatchewan, 500km away from the crash site. People witnessing the sonic boom and light show actually went out looking for the fall site only to be disappointed to find the fall was hundreds of kilometers away.

Lastly I'd like to leave you with an animation of a place I had lunch at while searching for meteorites. I had a moment, stopping and taking it all in, that I was lucky enough to be searching for rocks from space. As I was looking around I noticed a meteorite, just sitting there a few yards away, right in an area the whole search team had just been a few hours before. I got up and walked further only to find yet another meteorite. It is a place I will remember for the rest of my life.

Next Stop, China

2009-06-21T19:47:00.011-05:00

Now that my daughter's wedding is complete, my next major point of focus will be the final preparations for my Total Solar Eclipse tour of China, only 23 days away.

I should mention here that the wedding was a complete success, a good time was had by all and everything went like clockwork, boils down to good organization and the tons of work my wife put into it, even picking out my suit and tie. Even the weather co-operated, if my trip to China goes the same way I'll be a happy camper.

The major contributing factor to a good trip will of course be the weather, if cloudy skies, no see eclipse, having said that even with no Solar Eclipse I will still be in China, what a remarkable place to visit, so rich in history and tons of cool things to do and see.

I have bought lots of books on China since first deciding on doing the tour and have learned a lot about this fascinating place, such as;

-China's climate ranges from sub-arctic in the north to tropical in the south.

-China straddles 5 time zones but has adopted UTC, (Coordinated Universal Time), which is Greenwich Mean Time + 8 hours.

-China has the world's oldest continuous civilization dating back 8,000 years.

-China has the longest continuously used written language system in the world.

-Chinese astronomers were the first to record a meteor shower in 2133 BC. and a Solar Eclipse in 1217 BC.

-Over a million prisoners, peasants and soldiers were used to build the Great Wall of China. It took over 1700 years to build and stretches 1500 miles, and I'll be seeing it live and in person.

-Many religions are practiced in China; Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Heaven worship, Chinese folk religion, Christianity, and several other new religions and sects.

-The Chinese language has over 20,000 characters.

- Chinese invented the first ice cream in the 7th century.

- The Chinese actually invented a lot of cool things, gunpowder, rockets and fireworks, printing, books, papermaking and paper money, the abacus, stirrups, wheelbarrows, seismometers, porcelain, silk, the compass and kites. The kite was used for military purposes, spying or carrying messages.

-China's name came from the Qin Dynasty, (pronounced chin).

Somehow this whole going to China seems so surreal to me still, me...... who is so afraid of flying and an introvert.........is going off to China by myself, what am I thinking? It is kind of liberating to be able to tackle so many of my fears at one time, like I'm taking control of my life and doing what I want and not letting the phobias take control of me.

I'm going to leave you now with a You Tube video of the Terra-Cotta Warriors, one of my stops on my surreal tour.

My Daughter is Getting Married, So Black holes is Giving away Galileoscopes

2009-06-14T10:16:00.011-05:00

You may remember back in March I gave away a meteorite to mark my daughter's, (Amanda), birthday, then I thought what will I do to celebrate with you, my other daughter's,(Lindsay, image above), wedding this coming Saturday, June 20..... enter the Galileoscope. Back in March I headed over to the Galileoscope site and saw that for only $15.00 US you can own a scope, wow, at that price I could give away 3.....so I bought 5....1 for moi, cause I like scopes, 1 for the happy couple and 3 to give to you all.

The Galileoscope is another awesome cornerstone project for the International Year of Astronomy 2009, a high quality low price telescope kit. Called the Galileoscope because it has basically the same specs as the telescope Galileo first used to point towards the heavens 400 years ago, see what Galileo saw, and for really cheap.

I am expecting the scopes to reach me by the end of June-beginning of July, when they I arrive I will do a review, then start giving them away. I'm thinking some kind of draw, if you are interested in getting one, comment here or send me an email and I'll throw your name in the hat, or you could head over to the site and order one right now, at $15.00 US you just can't go wrong.

You have 2 options when purchasing, you can get some, price $15.00 US or give some, $12.50 US, give some is when you purchase anonymously and allow the Galileo people to donate to someone or group of their choosing.

You should know, you're on the hook for a tripod, doesn't come with. You can always go pirate, get yourself an observer's eyepatch, walk around saying Arrr Matey holding your scope and wearing the eyepatch, impress friends and family alike. I bought one when I first started using a scope, it impressed the wife, well actually she gave me the, gee what now look, but deep down inside I knew she was thrilled. It's supposed to cover your eye so you don't have to squint, so you are more relaxed, couldn't get into it, I squinted anyways, force of habit.

I'll leave you now with a video of the Galileoscope.

Cloudy Moon and The Mars Hoax...Once Again

2009-06-08T13:47:00.029-05:00

I was just sitting on my deck a few days ago admiring the Moon when a thin layer of clouds crossed it's path, I used the binoculars to see the effect they were having on it, and it looked beautiful.

Thought great, got my camera out, took some images but something got lost in the translation. So I noticed the Moon was going to be coming into view of my telescope sight in about 20 minutes, thought to myself, I got to try and translate what I am seeing into a picture, maybe the scope can do it. Clouds in just the right amount can add so much to the character of the Moon, acting like a filter they can actually bring out more detail and add mystery to it.

Opened up my POD, (Personal Observatory Dome), got everything set up but the clouds disappeared, this was actually a good thing, gave me time to focus on the Moon, image below, it is so hard to get a tight focus when clouds are in the way.

From this point on it was hurry up and wait, I just kind of hung out in my POD for almost an hour till the clouds finally came back, just in time, I did not want to loose the daylight, the daylight was a big part of what I was seeing, I love a daytime Moon, so pretty.

Eventually some more clouds crossed the Moon's path once again, and what you are seeing in these images are the results of a cloudy daytime Gibbous Moon, (gibbous meaning the Moon being more then half illuminated), I thought they turned out pretty good, a good representation of what I saw that night.

Heads up, the good old Mars Hoax is going around again. I have had plenty of emails already this year, even one from one of the directors of the company I work for about the validity of an email going around stating that in August, Mars, being so close to Earth will look to be the same size as our Moon, not true!!

This hoax started when back in August of 2003 Mars orbit put it only 56 million km from Earth, the closest it had ever been in recorded history. Somebody thought it would be neat to start a rumor stating that because Mars was so close to the Earth it would look the same size as the Moon.

It mixes truth and fantasy. True, back in August 2003 Mars was closest it had ever been to Earth, also true it wouldn't be this close to us again till 2287, but not true about Mars being the same size as the Moon.

I remember the first time I encountered this hoax, a friend of mine, after reading the email back in July of 2004 called me to ask if I would take an image of Mars for him seeing that it was going to be as big as the Moon, I said sure, no prob......... wait, what'd you say....... better send me a copy of that email.

He then forwarded me the email, a power point presentation. The next time I saw him, I explained that the email was bogus and the reasons, but he gave me the, yeah but it is on the internet, it must be true look. I finally convinced him and gazillions of other people, well at least 5 I can think of off the top of my head, that Mars will never be the same apparent size as the Moon, will this ever end........ probably not.

I took the image below back in December 2007 when Mars was in conjunction with the Moon, it shows the real apparent size comparison, you can see they aren't the same size by any stretch of the imagination.

I'll leave you now with another Milky Way animation.

How To Build A Robot Army, and New NGC Premiere

2009-06-03T07:41:00.009-05:00

My wife, knowing my love for Robots picked me up "How To Build A Robot Army". Robots have gotten a lot of bad press, what with shows like Battlestar Galactica or the Terminator series of movies, you know the cliche-ick (wd) plot line... Man creates Robot, Robot gets smarter and stronger then Man, Robot tries to destroy Man, very unfair for the Robots....People ..Robots are our friends, they only want what's best for their creators and this book shows that side of Robots.

The Book does a good job of letting the reader know the state of affairs concerning Robots in today's world and also how we might improve them by weaponizing and training them for battle, because we all know, surely the world of tomorrow is going to be fraught with danger, anybody that's watched movies knows this to be true.

So where do you start, author Daniel Wilson suggest starting your own Robot army can be as simple as duct taping a steak knife or Scissors to the top of a Robot vac, if an alien attacks, just point the bot at the unsuspecting Alien, then when the Alien goes to step on your low profile bot, you have your first victim, I'm thinking especially if it is a one legged variety Alien.

With titles of chapters like"How to Convert your Car into an Unmanned Ground Vehicle", "How To Keep A Sexy Fembot Fit For Battle" or "How To Deploy Spying Robots Bugs", you'll be set for any battles against any evildoers whether it be , Aliens, Vampires, Ninjas, Godzilla, Werewolves or White Sharks.

Just a heads up, tomorrow, June 4 at 9 pm EDT on the National Geographic Channel," World's Toughest Fixes: Satellite Launch." Get a behind the scenes look at what goes into launching a 250 million dollar 2 ton communications satellite on top of a rocket the size of a 12 story building. Watch as teams of scientists and engineers race to make final repairs and the launch window from French Guiana. I am hearing through my National Geographic Channel contact there are more excellent space show premieres coming up in August so stay tuned for further updates.

I 'll leave you now with an excellent YouTube video about Robots.

The Backbone Of Night

2009-05-28T17:36:00.007-05:00

"We are in the midst of millions and millions of suns-we are in the jewel house of the maker, and our soul mounts up, up to that wonderful creator, and we adore the hand that scattered the jewels of heaven so lavishly in this one vast region."

Edward Emerson Barnard.

There is just something about viewing our Milky Way Galaxy that invokes a sense of awe, so majestic, so huge. What can I possibly say or put into words that hasn't been already said or googled.

There are people in this world that aren't muddied by information, that don't have high speed Internet access, people such as the contemporary hunter gathers, "!Kung Bushmen", they actually believe the Milky Way holds up the sky.... if not for the Milky Way surely the stars would come crashing down to Earth, hence they call it "The Backbone Of Night", wow, to be a bushguy and enjoy stuff for just stuff, mind you they have to pray it doesn't break or they all die, but still, how magnificent it must be to be in their place under the stars, to look at the heavens so differently.

I went out with Astro-Nuts to our local astronomy club's dark site to image the night sky and to see what we could see, was lucky enough to capture a green/violet aurora along with the Milky Way, don't mean to be a braggy Bob again... well maybe a little, the image above was Editor's choice for the Sky and Telescope magazine's web site in their Reader's Photo Gallery section.
Image was taken with my Canon 40D and 10-17mm Tokina fisheye lens, 60 second exposure, ISO 3200, F3.5.

Our Milky Way is classified as a spiral galaxy with anywhere from 200-400 billion stars, the center, the bulge near the horizon, in the constellation Sagittarius has the highest concentration of stars therefore generally the brightest part of the Milky Way. Our Solar System orbit's the Galactic Center once every 220 million years.

Milky Way twirled in Photoshop.

While out that night saw a few meteors and captured the one above.

I'll leave you now with an animated version of one of my Milky Way shots.

Moon

2009-05-23T07:38:00.012-05:00

Ever since I can remember remembering about things I've been fascinated with all things Moon. From the first time I looked up in the sky at the Moon through the telescope my Dad bought me when I was a kid to taking images like the one above, a daytime waxing gibbous Moon, waxing just means the Moon going from New Moon to Full Moon phase, gibbous means the Moon is more then half illuminated but not full.

I'm always looking for ways to rediscover it, enter "Moon" movie.

Due for limited release June 12 this awesome indie movie, directed by David Bowie's son Duncan Jones and staring Sam Rockwell takes us to the Moon where Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is in the last days of his 3 year mission mining for Helium-3 when Sam gets into some kind of freak accident that finds Sam beside himself... literally, hint Solaris.

What is Helium-3 you might ask, well it is a very rare non-radioactive isotope sought after as a second generation fusion power source, very rare on Earth but thought to be in abundance on the Moon.

Now I have talked about Helium-3 before in one of my posts where I have purchased Lunar real estate, I stated that people were mocking me for buying property on the Moon but I would have the last laugh, well not me, I'll be dead but my great great grand kids will when NASA is negotiating with my great great grand kids for the mining rights to helium -3 on their property..... sure like NASA or the Chinese are going to be negotiating for mining rights from my descendants, that is unless my great great grand kids get there first, probably not going to happen.

A character driven movie it looks to be real good. Sam is not totally alone, he has "Gerty" a talking computer (Kevin Spacey) kind of like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sets look very cool, they used a combination of digital special effects and real live miniature models.

Duncan Jones sums up the movie and his thoughts behind it in an interview I found, and I quote; "My generation of geeks was a big fan of films like "Outland" and "Silent Running" and the original "Alien". Those kind of science fiction movies were more about the character and sort of human qualities than about the technology. I love those films and I miss those films in some ways, and we wanted to create something which felt comfortable within the canon of those science fiction films from the sort of late seventies to early eighties." I can hardly wait. I'll leave you now with the trailer.

A little... no a lot off topic, I went to see the latest incarnation of Star Trek and thought it was too cool, I also posted a YouTube video of it, too funny, I laughed till I stopped.

The Saskatchewan (Buzzard Coulee) Meteorite Search and Recovery Part II

2009-05-18T07:21:00.017-05:00

I was able to go out once again and look for the Buzzard Coulee Meteorite, was out a month ago with the University of Calgary research team and found 3 stones, this time I found 6 meteorites........the difference being, this go round I was able to keep them, Woo triple frigging Hoo!!

I went out with Astro-Nuts and his father, whom I have known for years through our local RASC club. We met up with a group of people who were given permission to search the landowners property. The above image is a pic of my favorite find, it has so much character. When meteors fall to the ground, this one in particular, (Buzzard Coulee) broke into thousands of tiny pieces, most of them tumble through the atmosphere before they hit the surface, the one above somehow got orientated and pointed one direction and developed flow-lines. It also has a couple cool looking thumbprints or regmaglypts, caused by vortices of hot gas burning thumbprint like impressions into the rock.(image above a domesticated meteorite, image below, what the same meteorite looks like in the wild.)

No matter how often you find these stones it's always a thrill, you are the first person on Earth to touch these rocks from space.

200x microscopic image of a flow line.

200x microscopic image of melt that occurred during entry into our atmosphere.

Search or Strewn Field.

Search Team.

Meteorite haul.

Hey there is nothing more satisfying then going to a meteorite strewn field, searching for and finding meteorites, bagging them, getting them GPSed, then taking them home to take and post pictures of for all of you, and even selling them, that's right as long as you are from Canada and you would like to purchase one I can sell them to you, but you have to be from Canada, seems the seller needs a permit if they want to sell outside Canada, odd, but once rocks from space fall in Canada they become part of our culture, go figure, another government money grab. I don't usually talk about selling stuff on this blog but if you are interested I have and have access to people with some rocks for sale at a decent price if you are so inclined.

A fun time was had by all. As I was taking microscopic images of one of my stones I also took some more polarized microscopic images of my angrite meteorite thin section and animated it for you, these extremely rare stones, some scientists believe their origin is Mercury are very cool and make as far as I'm concerned great art when crossed polarized.

Shanghai, Total Solar Eclipse 2009

2009-05-13T17:40:00.011-05:00

Just an update on my once in a lifetime trip to China to view live and in person the Total Solar Eclipse July 22 2009. A lot has transpired since I started my countdown to China a while back. First off, I now have a passport, what can I say, I don't....... or rather they don't let me out that often. Apparently you need passports to leave your home country, I've only heard speak of them before, now I have one.

To get one I first had to get a birth certificate, well I had one but under "Name" it had "Baby Boy". Plus I have gotten all my shots, I have over come my fear of needles to get all kinds of shots to protect me from God knows what, I spent over an hour listening to the travel agency nurse informing me of all the things I could get and how not to get them, turning white and getting faint as she's talking, and invariably it always happens, the statement,"Are you going to be okay, would you like a glass of water?" I hate talking about diseases, I always develop the symptoms when talking about them. I sent my passport away with my China visa application and I'm just waiting for the actual visa and passport to return, then I'm good to go.

I have done a lot of research about the weather stats over in Shanghai using sites such as NASA's Eclipse Web Site, It would kind of be sad if I went through what I went through spent what I spent to only have it cloudy the day of the eclipse, mind you a trip to China is okay cool to fall back on, so rich in history and lots to see. Shanghai is actually one of the better places to be during the eclipse. The image above shows it has the lowest average cloud cover of the sites in the eclipse's path. So here's the plan, I have found out that the Hotel... nay... Resort I will be staying at has Internet access, so I am planing , if all goes well, from the Hotel terrace...la de da, to use USTREAM to broadcast live from my blog, the actual Eclipse Event!!!!!! The Total Solar Eclipse starts at 9:32 am July 22, you can find what the time is in your location by using this converter, it works out to be 9:32 pm EDT July 21.

One last thing, as part of their International Year of Astronomy 2009 celebrations, KW Telescope is having a "Photographic Celebration Of the Night sky" where they display images taken by astrophotographers from across Canada, two of mine were selected to be on display for the event, my Nuclear Moon image above and my Double Halo with Circumzenithal Arc, image below, thought it was cool to have my work half way across the country being displayed with the best, very honored.

I'll leave you now with an animation of my Nuclear Moon.

Review, "Celestron FirstScope"

2009-05-08T14:09:00.014-05:00

Well, Celestron has gone and done it, made the heavens available to the average person on the street with their inexpensive, easy to use, well built scope.

Got mine yesterday, at just $49.99 US or $62.49 CAD, you just can't go wrong.

Look at the family on the box, they are frigging thrilled, probably because when they pulled the scope out of the box it was already assembled.

Just had to put the eyepiece in the eyepiece holder, total time 2 minutes, and that's with me popping nearly all the bubbles in the bubble wrap.

So what do you get for your money? You get the scope and 2 eyepieces giving you 15x and 75x magnification and you get to show people you have over for casual events to your humble abode awesome views of the Moon, Saturn, Mars, Venus as well as bright deep sky objects like star clusters from your light polluted backyard, who do you know that can say that?

Very portable, and as far as storage, store it in plain sight, you can see from above image how cute, yet professional it looks, you'll be the talk of your friends, family and neighbors. So it is inexpensive, comes assembled, can store it anywhere, looks cute, but what's it got under the hood?..... well nothing......it's not a car....duh. But what is does have is the ability to grab'n'go, no fancy set up time required, hey that makes a big difference, could be the difference between using it or not, and this is coming from someone, moi, that has had literally a gazillion scopes... well maybe not literally, but have had lots. I unpacked, assembled and was outside with the scope on my car trunk looking at the Moon, and...and imaging with my wife's little camera pointed at the eyepiece,(image below) total elapsed time, around 4 minutes!!

FirstScope First Image, 15x

FirstScope Second Image 75x

FirstScope and Canon 40D

I have not been approached by Celestron to do a review, all me, I thought I should tell anyone and everyone I can about this little guy, if you are looking for your first scope but don't want to spend a lot of money, this is the scope for you, I was very happy with the quality of the views of various heavenly bodies I pointed the scope at, including Saturn (which by the way is worth the price of admission alone). Astro-Nuts was with me trying it out as well, he liked it so much he went and ordered one.

Also available for this scope is an accessory kit which comes with 2 more eyepieces giving you 24x and 50x, a Moon filter, which allows for better imaging and viewing during a Full Moon, could have used that last night, a carrying case for your scope, a 5x24 finder scope and a CD ROM filling you in on the basics of astronomy, familiarizing you with stars, planets and constellations and gives you the ability to print off star charts, for only $24.94 CAD. Even though I still have a gazillion scopes, I chose this one for a quick Photon Phix and to take it with me in the car when going out of town, again grab'n'go, very cool, definitely 5 out of 5 stars.

I'll leave you with a little video of the FirstScope.

Lunar, Pleiades and Mercury Conjunction

2009-05-03T01:06:00.015-05:00

My last post I discussed the Mercury, Pleiades conjunction, well on April 26 the Moon joined the gathering.

What a beautiful sight. Each of the celestial objects took their turns being covered and then breaking through the clouds to allow me to be able to capture the trio.

Lunar , Pleiades Conjunction April 26 2009.

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction April 24 2009.

This was like a super dooper 3 part conjunction. First you had Mercury and the Pleiades, then the Moon arrives for part II, then the Moon leaves for part III. Since I don't get to image Mercury that often and the fact I love the Pleiades I made it my week long project to capture the part III conjunction to show Mercury drawing closer to the Pleiades, kind of cool, the way they move through the sky.

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction April 26 2009

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction April 27 2009.

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction April 28 2009.

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction April 29 2009

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction May 1 2009.

Mercury, Pleiades Conjunction May 2 2009.

Finally I'd like to mention about a cool new website that was just launched; " Portal To The Universe". It is another cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. It's an easy to navigate web 2.0 based astronomy site. Like a supermarket of websites, one stop shopping where you can go see the latest space images , listen to pod watch vodcasts, read about the latest happenings in space, see the current locations of the ISS or Hubble, and more. If you like space news and the such, check it out.

I'll leave you now with an animation of one of my Lunar, Pleiades and Mercury Conjunction

Lunar Venus Conjunction

2009-04-28T07:30:00.011-05:00

Was lucky to get break in the clouds to view a daytime crescent Moon and Venus come together April 22, added bonus... clouds, in just the right amount to add atmosphere. They, the clouds rolled back in just before the occultation, that is when the Moon actually covered Venus, but a daytime conjunction of the Crescent Moon and Venus is still a pretty picture.

That's not all, the Pleiades and little Mercury were and are as we speak also in conjunction very cool.

Click on the conjunction link above, it is the best description of a celestial conjunction ever, a conjunction is basically a temporary close gathering of two or more celestial bodies. To see the conjunction look to the west about an hour after Sunset, you'll see Mercury, as it will be the brightest object in the lower west sky, just above Mercury will be the Pleiades. They will be getting closer together till April 30, at which time they will start pulling away from each other, and drawing closer to the glare of our Sun, grab some binoculars if you can, the Pleiades are awesome through them.

From conjunctions to cats. When I first pulled up to the Marsden Hotel , where I was staying for the meteorite search, a cat ran up to me and rubbed against my legs...hey what can I say, some guys are chick magnets.... I'm a cat magnet, they love me , I love them. Anyways, 7 am the next morning there was a meowing at my window, the town cat was back, I let her in and we had tea, and surfed the net before the meteorite search, that's right, the Marsden hotel had high speed wireless internet technology.

I have been concerned about whether or not I'd be able to find wireless in China so as to post from there.... well if Marsden has wireless in their hotel, population 294, I'm pretty sure they have the technology over in Shanghai with a population of 14.6 million, I'm hoping in their Hotel rooms.

I'll leave you now with an animation of the Mercury/Pleiades encounter.

The Saskatchewan(Buzzard Coulee) Meteorite Search and Recovery

2009-04-22T08:01:00.014-05:00

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ellen and Lynne for organizing the Great Prairie Meteorite search for the University of Calgary, they both did an excellent job.

People from all walks of life across Canada were there hoping to find a piece of the Buzzard Coulee meteorite that fell just south east of Lloydminster Saskatchewan November 20 2008.

The image above is my first ever meteorite find, it was a thrill and an experience I will not soon forget, BTW it is the black stone just below the poop.

My first ever meteorite find documented and bagged.

We all lined up in teams and walked slowly across a field looking for a meteorite, noted astrophotographer and writer Alan Dyer was one of the people on my team.

The above image is my second find, to think it's been sitting there just like that since November 20 last year, you can see it starting to develop rust, the elements taking their toll.

The above image is my third and final meteorite find, again words can't described finding these rare rocks from space.

You are probably wondering why I have a picture of the hood of my car in this post, well it had just been hoofed by a Clydesdale Horse, that's right, try explaining that to your insurance company.

We were out searching for meteorites in a field when one of the team members noticed a gang of Clydesdale Horses, around 25-30 of them congregating around our cars, one of them started kicking the car hoods, who knew they do that sort of thing. So being real smart we started walking towards them, surely they'll disperse and run away, well... they ran alright, right towards us, before we knew it we were surrounded, these are huge animals close up let me tell you.

There were mixed emotions in the group, some were petrified like moi, others were trying to make friendly with the horsesees, hello...... we just saw one attack our cars, I attribute the wanting to make friends to the Stockholm syndrome. Finally we all started slowly walking away from them and they finally left.

I'll leave you with a few short clips I put together of my unforgettable meteorite/ horse encounter adventure.

Astrostuff

2009-04-18T11:30:00.013-05:00

While I'm getting ready for my Buzzard Coulee meteorite search I thought I'd throw together some images for my latest post, images of cool stuff I've been doing but didn't really know what to do with them, so I thought group them together all in one post.

The image above is my latest Micrometeorite, taken about a month ago. Image taken with my Celestron Digital Microscope at 200x.

The image above is a Sigma Leonid meteor taken last night, this shower generally has a peak of 1 or 2 an hour, kind of boring unless you're going out to try and image one, like me.

Was lucky to capture another double halo with circumzenithal arc from the roof of the mall I work at a month or so ago.

What Jupiter looks like through an average amateur astronomer type scope, looking through charts for the date this image was taken, the moons appear to be Callisto and Europa, Europa being the closest to.

Image above was taken March 8, the conjunction of the Beehive star cluster in the Constellation Cancer and the Moon.

Last but not least, I'd thought I'd throw this one in. It is one of my first images taken with my new Camera before I got a telephoto lens. It is an image of a Moon Antares conjunction February 2008, the second dimmer star is omi sco, in the constellation Scorpius, reminds me of the Lunar Venus Jupiter conjunction of December 1 last year which Priyank got a shot of, image below.

I'll leave you now with a couple blended images done in photoshop, then animated, one of a Moon Rise and one of my favorite Star Clusters, the Double Star Cluster in the constellation Perseus for my fantasy conjunction.

The Great Prairie Meteorite Search

2009-04-14T07:10:00.008-05:00

Well I've gone and done it...... booked a room for a couple of nights at the Marsden Hotel. I will be joining a bonafide official search for pieces of the Saskatchewan Meteor that fell just South of Lloydminster last November 20, how cool is that?

The search is being conducted by the University Of Calgary and are calling for volunteers, so if you happen to be in the area between now and the end of May...... and I really don't know why you would be, they have a place for you, a once in a lifetime chance to look for a meteorite.

The search will be done CSI style, where you have up to 10 people in teams all in a line walking slowly across the field looking for the meteorite, they figure there are still thousands of pieces yet to be discovered, and I will be there taking pics for a future post.

The image above is my Saskatchewan Meteorite on it's new stand, it goes round and round and shines a light on it as well, I like to watch it go round, till I get bored.

From meteorite search to meteor search, woo frigging hoo, after I finish my searching for the meteorite on Tuesday April 21, I will be heading back to Saskatoon to get ready for the peak of the Lyrid Meteor Shower. Look NE around 11:00 pm April 21 in the direction the constellation Lyra, if you don't know what the Lyra constellation looks like, don't worry, just look north east. Not the biggest meteor shower, around 10-20 an hour, but it is warmer then the usual meteor showers, being in April and this time you won't have the pesky bright Moon to interfere, doesn't rise here till 4:30 am CST, just after the meteor shower peaks, around 2:00 am CST on the 22nd.

But again, that's not all folks. After the meteor shower , or at around 6:39 am CST we have a Lunar occultation of Venus, that is, the Moon will cover Venus. If you live almost anywhere in North America, you will see the occultation, trouble being it will occur in the daytime, except on the West Coast, where the occultation occurs at twilight, so you will need at least a pair binoculars to view it properly, I will try to get some images of the Moon covering and then uncovering the Planet Venus for you if you miss it.

Well there you have it, lots of celestial stuff going on, A meteorite search, a meteor search and a Lunar occultation of Venus, almost too much excitement for one person to handle.

I'll leave you now with an animation of one of my creamsicle Full Moons.

April Full Moon and Around the World in 80 Telescopes

2009-04-09T07:09:00.016-05:00

Hot off the presses, taken last night my April or Full Pink Moon. Called the Full Pink Moon due to the herb moss pink which is one of the earliest wide spread flowers of the spring.

I was just about to put away my camera when all of a sudden the Moon burnt through the light cloud cover, I was looking in the direction of the Moon, and the whole thing just became, was really odd, from nothing to a Full Moon.

Get this, after taken the images I headed over to the Shoppers behind me and got a creamsicle, the orange ones, I love creamsicles but haven't had one for like years, and it was cold out, just had a craving for one.

Got home and downloaded the Moon Images and the first thing I thought of was creamsicle, the orange Moon and white cloud cover, here is the question, did the Moon and cloud cover lead me subconsciously in the direction of buying a creamsicle, or did I just think of a creamsicle Moon because I just bought one?

Part of the International Year Of Astronomy 2009 was a cornerstone project call 100 Hours of Astronomy, which between April 2 and April 5th had a ton of online events where you could discover the Universe with the rest of the world.

One of the coolest things they had , and you can still catch the recorded archived videos here, was Around the World In 80 Telescopes. They had live broadcasts from the largest observatories around and out of this world. It was really interesting to see the different observatories and the people that make them work.

Below Is a video, which I saw live, of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, which I will be touring in July with my visit to China.

Free TV Show from Ustream

Slooh Robotic Telescopes

2009-04-04T07:34:00.014-05:00

Eagle Nebula

You know how it is, you get home after a hard day at work, flop down in your easy chair and turn on the TV, and you think, "Geez, I'd like to view 16 Zet hya in the constellation Hydra but I just don't want to spend the hour it takes to set up my scope" and then you think, " Wait a minute.........I don't even have a scope, I'm really screwed, I'll never be able to look at 16 Zet hya in the constellation Hydra".

Cat's Paw Nebula

Well normally you would be screwed, but enter Slooh. For just 49.95 a year you get unlimited access to telescopes, LIVE in real time viewing, in the Canary Islands, Chile and soon to be Australia.... that's right I said Australia.

Omega Centauri

Choose between watching the programed tours of the live night sky or step in yourself and take control by way of booking the telescopes in 5 minute time slots where you are able to choose any object your heart desires, like 16 Zet Hya in the constellation Hydra, or something good like Omega Centauri, Image above.

North American Nebula

But that's not all folks, you have access to imaging equipment, where you can image your celestial target, as well as download it to your hard drive to use as wallpaper or post like I'm doing on the Internet, all this again for only 49.95 a year. They have a 7 day trial period where you can try before you purchase as well as a 14.95 plan where you can purchase 100 minutes of telescope time, either way if you are interested in viewing the night sky through a telescope, can't go wrong with Slooh, nothing like it anywhere else. I have been a member since 2004 and I have blogged about Slooh before, but they keep adding scopes and decreasing the price, thought I should give them another mention.

This coming Friday, April 10 at 10 pm ET 400 Years of The Telescope will be airing on PBS. "The 60 minute film takes viewers on a breathtaking journey back to Galileo's momentous discoveries, through the leaps of knowledge since then, and to the future of colossal telescopes both here on Earth and floating in the cosmos." I'll leave you now with the trailer, looks pretty good.

Sidewalk Astronomy at The Mall

2009-03-31T01:11:00.021-05:00

The mall I work at participated in Earth Hour by turning off all non-essential lighting between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm Saturday March 28th. I was approached by our local Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Centre, which btw I am a proud member of, to see if they could set up some scopes at the mall during Earth Hour.

I thought to myself, what a great idea, celebrate 2 things at once, Earth Hour and the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

It is the goal of the IYA 2009 to show 10 million people their first look through an astronomical telescope, they figure if 100,000 amateur observers each show 100 people their first look at the heavens through an astronomical telescope, they will make their goal. What better way to reach my 100 then a trip to the mall with my scope.

Well the response was more then we could have hoped for, from the time we set our scopes up at 8:20 pm to the time we shut down at 9:40 pm, it was non stop action. We had 3 scopes set up, 2 further down from me showing the beautiful crescent moon, and me at the main entrance showing Saturn. The thrill of seeing people's reaction at their first view of Saturn through a telescope never gets old. Words like "unbelievable", "cool", "unreal" were spoken by everyone.

A dad was lifting his son up to the eyepiece to look at Saturn, when the kid saw it he shouted and kicked his dad in the leg, well not exactly, but close to, if you get my meaning, the father almost dropped the kid, good thing he didn't, man that had lawsuit written all over it.

This whole experience got me thinking, watching the line build, people, after viewing Saturn yelling to the people at the end of the line,"It's worth the wait", over hearing people talking to other people in person and on their cells about the experience they just had and to come and see for themselves, it made me think , there is a real interest in the night sky, maybe one of these kids will go on to be an astronomer or science guy, not because of what I personally did, but the fact that a scope was there at the right time.

I know the effect the first look through a telescope had on me, except for one person that night, it was every one's first time. My hat goes off to our local RASC , taking time out of their busy schedules to do this on a regular basis.

The security team had one of our security cameras pointed at the main entrance way, never can be too secure, just in case someone was to knock me out and steal my 82 lb scope and tripod and run through the dark parking lot and try to squeeze it into their car, hey better safe then sorry.

Anyways I copied a little bit of that time to give you an idea what it looked like, mind you it is kind of dark being no lights and all.

Family Talents and Earth Hour 2009

2009-03-26T07:09:00.010-05:00

I thought I'd do something special this post and showcase some of the many talents of my family. My upcoming trip to China has not only made me think of my own mortality, with my obsession with plane crashes and dying but also the mortality of the ones I hold dear. Sometimes I think we all take for granted the ones closest to us, this is just a way of paying tribute to and showing how much I appreciate them and what they have accomplished.

The image above is an Icon my wife is working on. It is called "The Holy Trinity" based on the Icon written by Andrei Rublev in the early 1400's. Right now it is in the "chaos stage" with some of the garments having the first highlight applied. When this icon is completed Cathy will have spent several hundred hours of work on it.

My oldest daughter Amanda, photographed what I like to call "Mediterranean Moon". This image was taken in Barcelona a few years ago. Amanda is a talented photographer who still loves using actual film, although she now owns and uses a Nikon D200, the above image was taken with a Nikon FA. The composition is great, I love how the Moonlight reflects off the Mediterranean Sea, plus it has palm tress in it, I love palm trees.

Last but not least is a work done by my youngest daughter Lindsay, the one that is getting married June 20th of this year. It is a Wolf done using the technique of Scratchboard. Using sharp tools you carve into a layer of white china coated with black India ink, very cool.

This coming Saturday March 28 at 8:30-9:30 pm local time is this year's "Earth Hour". On March 28 you can vote Earth by switching off your lights for one hour, or you can vote for global warming by not, your choice, let your voice be heard, vote Earth.

One billion votes is the goal this year, the vote will be presented at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen December of this year. The meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, this agreement will replace the Kyoto Accord, the most significant international agreement to control green house emissions as the Kyoto Accord expires in 2012.

I will be voting Earth as well as the mall I work at. We are turning off, for that hour all non-essential lighting, actually our local Astronomy club, weather permitting will be setting up some scopes outside one of the mall entrances, kind of grouping Earth Hour and The International Year of Astronomy together for the hour, I will be taking pics and posting on a later post.

I'll leave you now with an animated "Mediterranean Moon". I like this animation so much I am going to place it on my sidebar, actually I will be posting another from one of my readers, so if you have anything you would like to animate and post on my sidebar, send it in to me. I will be rotating the spot for the readers regularly, so send one in.

Book Review, " The Hunt For Planet X, New Worlds And The Fate Of Pluto"

2009-03-22T08:31:00.019-05:00

I don't usually do book reviews, actually this is the first post I've done with "Book Review" in the title, but every once in a while a book comes along that I think my readers , who might not be in the market for a book about space would enjoy.

What caught my attention about this book, besides the freaky cool eye on the cover and the fact that the words "Planet X" and "Pluto" are in the same title, is, as I was reading it that it is very accessible to the average person on the street, it is a bunch of little stories personalizing our solar system in easy to understand language. It is a book about how our solar system came to be, how astronomers and planetary scientists go about discovering the next new planet. It has drama, complete with the human factor, egos, personalities, foul play even thievery come into play in the rush to be the first discoverer of the next "Planet X", the next yet undiscovered planet.

It is a book rich in history, for example you'll learn of a German astronomer being the son of a convicted witch, if you happen to know who this astronomer is, the first person commenting with the name of gets a free pair of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses.

It also has a very high PTPR, or as I like to call, Picture To Print Ratio, meaning it has lots of pictures, I like pictures, this book has it's fair share, also it has glossy pages, now that might not be a criteria for you when buying a book, but the glossiness brings out the beautiful illustrations nicely and makes you feel like you're holding a quality book.

You'll also read about the theory how "Planet X" may have a part in the 2012 destruction of our planet as well as a possible "Death Star", a companion Red dwarf star to our Sun in the far reaches of our solar system chucking mass extinction comets at us every 26 million years or so.

Pluto, I have always thought the demotion of Pluto from planet status to whatever it is called now a farce. The book goes into the whys and wherefores of the decision to demote, but in the end, in Bobland it will always be a planet.

In one week back in August 2006 the IAU went from 9 to 12 then down to 8 planets, just goes to show you the uncertainty of what to do with little Pluto.

I say, you know what, Pluto may not meet all the new criteria developed by the intellectual elite for remaining a planet, but Damn the torpedoes, let's make an exception to the new rules and keep Pluto with full planetary status, has the science of astronomy become totally void of emotion and compassion?

At least we have the state of Illinois, they have restored Pluto's planetary status, at least for the their "Pluto Day". If you want to make your voice heard you can head over to The Pluto Petition web site and cast your vote.

Overall, freelance astronomy writer Govert Schilling did a great job of bringing the solar system to the masses in well written easy to understand shorts packed full of adventure and intrigue.

I'll leave you now with my latest Lunar image animated.

Nuclear Moon

2009-03-18T08:20:00.023-05:00

At -49c with windchill, .......(you know I'm just going to drop the windchill thing, it is always windy here in Saskatchewan, especially on the bald prairie where I take my images from), I really , really didn't want to go outside to take a pic of the March Full Moon, but I thought with the cold temps I may get some wacky images of the Moon.

When the warm less dense upper atmosphere meets the colder dense atmosphere, that is -49c for example, the place where they meet acts as a refracting lens and it inverts the bottom of the Moon, what you get is the real Moon setting on a fake mirage Moon, kind of cool, at one point, the Moon looks like a mushroom cloud.

At least with the Moon I know exactly how long it takes to set so I can sit in my car until the last possible minute before jumping out and snapping the pics. Because of the Earth's daily rotation the Moon appears to travel through the sky it's own diameter , or roughly .5 degree every 5 minutes, so if I want to shoot a 10 minute real time movie clip I pop out of my car when it is around 2 Moon lengths from setting. Also just for trivia sake, because the Moon orbits the Earth in the same direction as the Earth spins on its axis, the Moon appears to travel backwards, or along with us in the sky it's own diameter, or .5 degree every hour, over a 24 hour period that's 12 degrees, multiply that by 30, the average amount of days in a month and you get....TA DA.. 360 degrees or a complete Lunar orbit of the Earth....just so you know.

To take the movie clip below I had to stand outside in the frigging cold -49c weather and count down 5 seconds to take each image, let me tell you it was hard enough concentrating not to freeze and die let alone count down the 5 seconds, but in the end it was worth it.

At around 56 seconds into the clip notice the fake Moon rise to meet the real Moon. Actually because the atmosphere itself acts like a refracting lens, the Moon we see sitting on the horizon is actually a fake Moon, the real Moon is just below the horizon, the atmosphere refracts the real Moon up to what we actually see, so in essence what you are watching is the fake fake Moon rising as the fake Moon is setting, we don't really ever see the real Moon. I know this is a lot of technical stuff but I find it interesting, maybe some of you can follow, if not, you can just look at the pretty images, at least I think they're pretty and call it a day, anyways hope you enjoy the video.

I'm Going To China!!!!

2009-03-14T09:36:00.011-05:00

Wednesday July 22 at 9:30 am Shanghai time the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth casting it's tiny shadow on to the Earth in a small corridor that includes Shanghai, and I will be there live and in person to witness and image the fantastic event we call a Total Solar Eclipse! I have placed a countdown timer on the top right of my site to remind you and me of when I leave on a plane to this event.

The above image shows the path of the total solar eclipse.

I will be on an 11 day tour so not only will I be witnessing the Total Solar Eclipse I will also be visiting the Great Wall Of China.

The unbelievable TerraCotta Warriors, Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven, a boat ride across the Kunming Lake, and a visit to the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, frigging awesome stuff.

The only down thing about my whole adventure are the plane flights, I am terrified of flying. When getting my passport the person processing me said she just went to China as well and that she is also afraid of flying, she suggested lots of knock out drugs and head phones. Anybody out there that has any suggestions I'd like to hear from you, also anyone who has been to China I'd be interested on hearing from you as well about suggestions or things to look for.

I'll be taking 1,000's of images and have already bought more memory cards, so expect lots of pics. Hopefully they have Internet connections in the Hotels. I will post images of the eclipse as soon as I am able after the event. To see a live Total Solar Eclipse has been a lifelong dream of mine... soon to be realized.

I'll leave you now with an animation of my latest Sunset image complete with a Green Flash.

Meteorite Winner and Celestron's FirstScope

2009-03-10T17:45:00.007-05:00

To celebrate my oldest daughter Amanda's upcoming birthday this Wednesday I did up a " If it's your birthday or around your birthday or any one's birthday you know and you are first to send in a celestial image you get a meteorite" contest, congratulations Genie for being the first to send in the above super celestial Lunar image, love the title "Happy Birthday Bob's Daughter!" as well.

I just had to post the above Genie image, just because I think it is too cool, so original, again well done Genie.

People, if you are thinking of buying a telescope but are afraid you'll waste your hard earned money because you're afraid you may only use it a couple times, and you don't really have anywhere to put it.......... boy, have a got a scope for you. I am on Celestron's mailing list for new products and such, when I received the info on this little guy I just had to share it with you.

Celestron's FirstScope, small and compact, and at only $49.99 US or $62.49 CAD, can't really go wrong. Talk about a grab and go scope, more like a grab and hug scope, it's so cute. Got the sudden urge to look at the stars, no prob, just pull it out of it's small storage space, run outside to the patio table and you're good to go, it's that simple of a setup.

Don't let it's looks and size fool you, with a 3" mirror you'll be able to see the Moon, planets, and bright deep sky objects with it, even from the city. Objects like star clusters, some nebulae and brighter galaxies, like Andromeda will now be within your grasp. They won't be shipped out until May, I put my preorder in and will be talking about it further after I've had a chance to actually use it.

It comes with a couple eyepieces as well, a 20 mm gives you 15x magnification, as well as a 4mm giving you 75x magnification. It is named official product of the International Year Of Astronomy 2009.

I'll leave you now with one of my Lunar, Venus conjunctions animated.

A Birthday Meteorite

2009-03-07T09:28:00.014-06:00

So my oldest daughter text messaged my wife and I a few weeks ago reminding us it was going to be her birthday soon and to get our present ideas ready, and that she's expecting big things from us.

So I thought to myself, wow, what about a meteorite? Everybody wants a meteorite.....rite? wrong, when I messaged her back about how she would feel about a meteorite she asked if it was a trick question, and that maybe I should let mom decide..ouch.

I sometimes forget not everybody is enthusiastic about things from space as I am. To Celebrate my daughters birthday and to see if there is anyone else out there that likes stuff from space I decided to give away a meteorite here on Black holes.

If you or someone you know is having a birthday, or if you just had yours and I forgot, Happy Birthday, (sorry I forgot but I don't remember any invites coming my way), you have a chance of getting a meteorite, your very own space rock.

All you have to do is comment here it is or was somebodies birthday... and... and, you have to submit a celestial image taken from this time forward to my email address, no contest, just the first one through, I suck at judging. I will post your image and link back to you. If you want to know about the meteorite I'll be giving away,(image below), just click on the Sikhote-Alin meteorite video on my sidebar, it is the best video ever made on how they look for and document a meteorite fall, classic B&W in Russian, with subtitles, love it.

The meteorite at the top of this post is the Pallasite meteorite "Brenham". Your classic looking what people think meteorites should look like meteorite, very pretty.

It is classified as a stony iron meteorite and originates from the mantel/ core boundary of an asteroid. Some of the minerals it contains are Troilite, Chromite, Olivine and Peridot, (the gem quality of Olivine) in a Nickel/Iron matrix.

To date there have been around 50,000 meteorite finds, Pallisites account for only around 60.

The above image was taken with my Celestron LCD Digital Microscope at 100x, shows some of the beautiful Peridot this meteorite contains. Peridot is my birthstone, August, and apparently has some healing properties. It is known as the healer's stone. It is used to clean your auras,regulate your life cycle and emits a friendly energy, too cool to think this one came from space.

I'll leave you with an animation of the above image, it looks like a cave opening on a river when it is animated.

The Lunar Pleiades Occultation

2009-03-03T12:29:00.018-06:00

Lunar Pleiades Occultation March 3 2009 2:01 am

Oh...... what a beautiful sight. The clouds broke for me once again last night for the awesome gathering of the Moon and Pleiades star cluster. The Occultation started with the Moon covering the star Electra at exactly 2:01 am March 3.

Had my doubts throughout the day as the weather channel was going between clear skies and snow,but in the end clear skies prevailed and allowed me to view and image the gathering. The image above was taken at 9:30 pm cst.

As the night got older the Moon drew closer to the cluster. Due to the relative motions of the Earth and the Moon, the Moon appears to go backwards or retrograde when compared to the starry background, why you see in these images, the Moon getting closer to the cluster,to finally occult, or cover some of it's members.

Getting closer,

And closer,

Closer still,

Finally occultation.

Just off to the left, Orion the Mighty Hunter was setting as well, kind of leaves a guy speechless. To be alone under the stars that night was just too much for me to even begin to put into words, so I won't.

Next gathering of these two will be April 26. Look to the west just after Sunset. This time Mercury joins the grouping. Do yourself a favor and get some binoculars, to see the Moon, Pleiades and Mercury in close proximity with binocs will be something you will not soon forget.

I'll leave you now with one of my first images animated, it was cool how the clouds opened just for a minute to allow the Pleiades to peek through.

The Lunar Venus Conjunction

2009-02-28T13:55:00.013-06:00

Finally, the heavens shone down upon me, we had clear skies, mind you -40c windchill, but still clear skies and was able to get some pics of the beautiful Lunar Venus conjunction last night.

I hope you all got to see it as well, Genie did and got a great pic. I decided to do something different this time, change my picture taking venue, went downtown.

It is amazing the amount of people walking, and jogging, that's right jogging around downtown at -40c with windchill. Had a lot of people stopping to see what was going on, I explained and pointed to the Moon and Venus, they all looked up and said things like I didn't know, or that is pretty, all of them thought Venus was a star, no worries, Astro Bob set them straight, gotta do my part for the International Year Of Astronomy 2009.

You'll notice I took a lot of images, hey not very often I get clear skies and an event at the same time, and with the forecast for snow and clouds this coming Monday for the Lunar Pleiades conjunction, I thought I would really go crazy with this one.

Spent nearly 4 hours imaging and traveling in the car to various places taking pics. Final stop was just outside of town where my horizon shots were taken.

Got a cool cloud effect on the Moon, notice the color starting to change from white to an orange as they start to set.

At Black hokes I always try to do something a little different every now and then, the image below certainly qualifies. All I did was download Paint.net processing software, in the program under effects there is something called "Polar Inversion" clicked on it, and it transformed one of my Lunar Venus image into something , well very different, lots of Moons, lots of Venuses and lots of trees..... good enough for mes.

Another positive, I was just reading on Universe Today, an excellent site, I highly recommend you subscribe to them, about the Obama administration going ahead with Bush's plan to put a man on the Moon by 2020. A pleasant surprise indeed, who knows they may still be in the race for the Moon.

I'll leave you with a clip I put together of 70 images, real time 10 minutes. Courtesy of Planetary Mechanics, the celestial pairing of the Moon and Venus setting in the west, a beautiful orange combo.

On Going to The Moon and Beyond

2009-02-26T08:11:00.015-06:00

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the Human Race to keep all it's eggs in", Robert Heinlein.

Woo Hoo, stopped snowing, but along with the no snow comes the -30c weather, sucks. In between the snow and clouds I got some clear skies. I was able to get some images the other day of a pretty crescent Moon and added a cool oil painting effect.

In my observing down times I have been watching "From The Earth to The Moon" on HBO, an interesting show about our adventure to the Moon. Also been watching for the like gazillionth time "In The Shadow Of the Moon", and... and I've been reading, "The Last Man On the Moon" an excellent book about the Apollo missions from the standpoint of an actual astronaut Gene Cernan. You may have noticed an underlining theme to all the above, I love the Moon, but most importantly, the fact we made it there, hopefully to return one day.

Well maybe not so much. I've also been reading a paper that was just released out of Rice University.

Rice University and NASA go back a long way. Rice University back in 1962 donated a lot of land for NASA's Manned Spacecraft center, later named the Johnson Space Center. The donation prompted Kennedy to make a famous speech from Rice Stadium where he states;

"We chose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

The report is directed to the new Obama administration and details the direction NASA should be heading, basically it states NASA should focus more on Earth centric projects like energy and the environment and put a hold on going to the Moon and Mars. They do have some good recommendations in the 15 page report, that is except for one, not going to the Moon and Mars, if it were up to me we'd be on Mars 30 years ago. We are in a galactic shooting gallery, we need to start thinking off planet for our survival, because it is a matter of "when" not "if" we get hit by a mass extinction asteroid/comet.

I know you're probably thinking like everyone else I talk to is, it's just not the right time to be spending money on such costly ventures with the economy the way it is, seriously I feel like I'm part of a bad Sci-Fi B movie, you know the type, you have a crazy scientist yelling the sky is falling, the sky is falling, we're all going to die unless something is done, and everybody writes him off as a crack pot, till near the end of the show when everybody sees he was right, implements his master plan and avoids destruction, and they all live happily ever after, and everyone's not dead. I'm kind of the star in my own movie, trying to warn people of the possible catastrophic impact event to come, and everybody has written me off, but you know it's not a matter of if I'm right, it's all a matter of when I'll be right.

For now it looks like we are going to have to depend on China and India, both have stated their intentions on getting a Man on the Moon by 2020. but you know,

"Any one Nation can get to the Moon, it will take the human and financial resources of many to go beyond, where we need to be, to ensure the survival of our species"........... me.

See now that I am a star in my own make believe crazy B movie I'll have to start to italicise more of my musings.

One last thing, look to the West tomorrow night, Friday the 27, just after Sunset to see a pretty gathering of the Crescent Moon and Venus, should make for a great pic.

Sunrise Images and A Total Solar Eclipse

2009-02-22T12:58:00.013-06:00

I am so sick and tired and tired of being sick and tired of winter, it's either frigging cold or it warms up only to snow. The weather here needless to say has not been cooperating with my celestial viewing habits, missed the Lunar/Pleiades conjunction earlier this month and this morning missed the Lunar, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars conjunction due to clouds, all was not lost though, the clouds which prevented me from seeing and imaging the planets allowed me to capture a beautiful Sunrise.

Atmospheric refraction stretched out the bottom of the Sun giving the it a cool oblonged shape.

Even got a Green Flash.

As well as a Red Flash

I'm hoping the weather will work with me March 2, the next major conjunction. Look to the West the evening of March 2 for another gathering of the Moon and Pleiades, they will be close together most of the night in North America but will be their closest together as the pair sets together around 2:30 am CST.

We had a penumbral eclipse February 9, oh and by the way I missed it as well due to clouds. A Penumbral eclipse is when the Moon passes through the Earth's penumbral shadow, what you see is a slight Earth shadow on the Lunar surface making part of the Moon look darker. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency released what the event looked like from the Moon. Using Kaguya's, High Definition camera, the orbiter captured a beautiful image of what we know all too well , the diamond ring effect that happens during a Total Solar Eclipse here on Earth, very pretty.

Kaguya is Japan's Lunar Orbiter who's mission it is to gather data such as the Moon's mineralogy and geographic data as well as magnetic and gravity field information so as to better understand the Moon's origin and evolution. Kaguya is expected to ends it's mission with a controlled fall to the Lunar surface sometime in June. I'll leave you now with a clip of the event.

NASA and The ESA Are Going To Jupiter and Saturn

2009-02-18T12:13:00.021-06:00

NASA has just released a major announcement. Two outer planet flagship missions have been given the go ahead for further studies and eventual implementation.

1. The Europa Jupiter system mission

2. The Titan Saturn system mission.

What is too cool about this announcement is that most everybody was expecting approval of one or the other, not both. NASA and the European Space Agency working closely together hope to finally answer the question, is there life elsewhere in the universe.

The Europa Jupiter mission has been given priority, launch date 2020. Two orbiters, one built by NASA one by ESA will arrive at Jupiter in 2026. The orbiters will study Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

I was able to reach Dr.Richard Greenberg over the phone and ask him a few questions about the Europa Jupiter mission. Dr. Greenberg is Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. He has written two books on Europa, "Unmasking Europa" a book for general audiences and "Europa The Ocean Moon" a more detailed book and suited for undergraduates.

Dr. Greenberg was part of a science definition team assembled by NASA to put together facts they already knew about Jupiter, Saturn and their moons and to come up with the best ideas for the two missions. When I asked Dr. Greenberg what his research group's main goal was now, he stated to continue to do research and interpret what they now know as much as possible so that when the mission is finally designed and run it will be done with as much knowledge as possible.

Dr. Greenberg who's background is in Celestial mechanics, meaning the study of the orbits and rotations of planets and their moons, first put forth the idea that the moons of Jupiter, specifically Europa might be affected by tides created by Jupiter's enormous pull on little Europa, creating what we see as crisscrossing lines or cracks on Europa's surface, that an ocean is just below a thin layer crust and that if we were able to examine the slush that comes up through the cracks created by the enormous tidal waves we could very well find some type of oceanic substances and perhaps samples of any organisms that might be present in the ocean.

I also asked him what we hope to learn from the Europa Jupiter mission that we haven't already discovered through the Galileo mission to Jupiter. He mentioned things like the orbiter being equipped with a laser altimeter which would measure the topography of the surface ice, something new. Radio tracking, allowing the gravitational field of Europa to be measured, not been done before, putting the two experiments results together will determine the amplitude of the tides, providing further confirmation of the unseen ocean.

The new NASA orbiter will be equipped with a very high resolution camera, you see the problem with the Galileo mission to Jupiter was the main antenna never opened so they had a limited amount of high resolution images sent back, not anywhere near the amount they would have liked, the new camera will produce near meter scale imaging, to see up close and personal, to image the surface perhaps at just the right time when slush is breaking through to the surface. Now, very cool, an orbiter radar, maybe able to once and for all determine the thickness of Europa's ocean covering crust, but most critical determine linkages between the ocean and the surface, the connection between the ocean and Europa's surface are what make it possible for life to flourish.

The Titan Saturn mission will consist of a NASA orbiter and an ESA lander and research balloon, the lander will actually land in one of the northern lakes of Titan and test for signs of life while the orbiter flys through the plumes of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons again looking for any signs of life.

When all is said and done, two very exciting missions to look forward to. Looking for and finding life even microbial in our own solar system, our own backyard, increases the chances that we are not alone, that there is someone else out there, maybe even watching us right now.

Solar Halo and Really Big Moon

2009-02-16T07:53:00.011-06:00

People I'm so happy. While organizing my more then 23,000 images I've taken over the last 14 months I came across a folder called "Future Posts" and found some images I'd thought I had lost.

The image above is a Solar Halo I took last May on my trip to visit my daughter and boyfriend in Winfield, near Kelowna. What is remarkable about this Solar Halo is that it was taken when it was +25c, very rare. Didn't last all that long, in fact you can see the clouds roll in to dissolve it.

Now just the other day I went out to capture a daytime Moon Set. The sky was full of ice crystals usually if you can image the Moon set low on the horizon when the atmosphere is full of ice crystals it looks unusually large, didn't disappoint. the Moon looked huge, very cool, snapped an image before it ducked below the lower clouds.

This coming February 22nd, there is going to be a beautiful conjunction to look forward to. Just before Sunrise look to the East, South East around 8:00 am CST. for a super duper gathering of the slim crescent Moon, then Mercury, then Jupiter, then Mars. Will be really pretty and rare, perfect photo op. Around 7:20 am CST, you'll see the Moon rise, then below and to the left Mercury will rise, then Jupiter, finally Mars, good luck with the viewing and imaging.

Going through my images I decided to put together a compilation of some of my "thought I'd lost images" with some older favorites. Most of them taken with my Canon 40D, some with my microscope and others like some of the Moon shots taken with my camera attached to my scopes. I have all of you to thank for these images, if I wouldn't have gotten so much encouragement from you readers I probably wouldn't have taken so much in such a little time, if you would have come back in the comments and said things like " Your images suck, this blog sucks, oh and you suck", I probably wouldn't have stood out in the -40c weather to take as many as I did. The video shows as well a never before seen on this blog a cross polarized Asteroid Vesta meteorite as well as one of my favorite Lunar DAG 400 meteorites, it looks cool, gray and cratered , much like the Lunar surface itself, hope you enjoy.