Another Moon, Jupiter ,Venus Conjunction Image And The Moon, Pleiades Meet

It's like when your Uncle Fred from out of town comes in to town a week after Christmas with your Christmas present, for just a little while it's Christmas again. That's how I felt when Daniel sent me the above Lunar, Venus, Jupiter conjunction image, very cool, keep the feeling alive.

Great image Daniel!! A pair of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses are on their way out to you.



While we are on the topic of conjunctions, like when aren't we, there was a Lunar, Pleiades one last night. Totally cloudy here so I didn't think I would be able to see it. The cat was barking for a bedtime snack around 9:30pm like she always does, so I headed to her food dish, and happened to look out the basement window and low and behold I noticed a break in the clouds, got me all excited, got my stuff together and went outside to watch and get the above and below images. Both images were blended in Photoshop, the Pleiades at 2 sec exposure, the Moon at 1/800 sec exposure. The clearing only lasted a few minutes so I didn't get the Moon in occultation with the Pleiades, that is when it covers some of the Pleiade's stars, which happened quite a few hours later behind the stupid clouds, but I was still able to view and image them together, still pretty.



If you are looking for another pretty view, check out the Full Moon rise this Friday evening, this Full Moon is special. The Moon does an elliptical orbit around us and it will be in it's perigee stage, closest to us, the year's biggest Moon, 14% bigger then when it is apogee, furthest from us. But here is the kicker, it will be 30% brighter, which sucks if you're going to be watching for meteors during the Geminid shower this weekend.



Thought I would post a cool animation of a Coronal Mass Ejection, (CME), that occurred December 8, a few days ago, it was huge, look at it, looks to be around 100 Earth diameters. Apparently it blasted out towards Saturn, looks like our Sun is starting to get a little more active.

Halo watch, with the arrival of colder temperatures be on the look out for Solar and Lunar halos. When ever you get a combination of cold temps and the high, thin, wispy cirrus clouds you may be lucky to catch halos and dogs. I'll leave you now with an animation of a Solar halo I took a couple days ago, they come and go very fast, this one broke up due to lack of cirrus clouds after only 15 minutes.

Our Sun

Well this has got to be the coolest Solar Video I have ever seen! Just released by NASA last week, it shows our Sun in action. Pictures taken by Stereo (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) are stitched together to produce the video. Stereo is basically two space based observatories providing stereoscopic measurements to give us a better understanding of Coronal Mass Ejections or CMEs.

The Stereo mission provides us with a better understanding of why CMEs happen and also provide early warnings for any Earthbound CMEs, since they do major damage to satellites, just about anything electrical, have been known to cause blackouts and if there are any Astronauts working out in space they have to take cover.

Warnings are issued to various tech companies to prepare them for the CMEs, my daughter's boyfriend is an IT guy and gets them so he can prepare for it and warn any clients that he feels may be affected by the CME.

CMEs are the "biggest" explosion in our solar system, equivalent to one billion hydrogen bombs and can travel up to two million miles per hour making the trip to Earth in just 2-4 days!

Since we're on the topic of the Sun I thought I would add a couple of pics I took of the sun. below are pictures taken with a Solar Hydrogen Alpha Telescope, it allows only the hydrogen wavelength of the Sun through, allowing us to see the Chromosphere where all the neat stuff happens. Below you can see on both pictures Solar Prominences, shooting into space, the pic right below you can also see a sunspot as well as the Suns "orange peel" look which is created by thousands of Solar Granules , small convection cells 200-2,000 km in diameter, ever changing, have lifespans anywhere from 8 to 20 minutes.