The Lyrid Meteor Shower

Just a few hours before I took the above pic it was snowing so much that you couldn't see a few feet in front of you, but the Clear Sky Clock for my area said clear skies between 1:00 and 4:00 am, it has never let me down before so I got everything ready, camera, tripod, winter coat, gloves, toque just in case there was a break in the weather.

Got a little sleep woke up around 1:00 am thinking no way it's going to be clear and I can get back to some nice cozy sleep in my warm bed, there will be other showers, May 5th to be exact, the Eta Aquarids which I will talk about later. Anyways go through the motions, go to the window and, oh crap....I mean...oh goodie, clear skies, the little voice in my head was saying, "go back to bed, this isn't the shower you're looking for", but I thought no way, I'm not listening to that stupid voice, I'm going out, not going to let the voice be the boss of me.

Once out and set up it was great, it was quite, lots of fresh air and the Cosmos laid out before me. Now the thing with the Lyrids, they tend to be fast and short, reason being they hit the Earth's atmosphere head on and burn out quickly, I managed to capture a long one, right through Hercules keystone, the above image and in the image below I captured a couple meteors in the same pic last Thursday night, (since the shower runs from April 16-25), very cool.

I don't know if you were able to get out and catch the shower, if you didn't, not to worry, mark your calenders, the next meteor shower is just around the corner, May 5th.


The Eta Aquarids, and it's a moonless night, so they will be nice and bright, the best kind, there is a slight problem though, this shower's radiant, the constellation Aquarius only rises about an hour before morning twilight begins, around 4 am, but it should be a good show up to 30 an hour.


The Aquarids shower is the result of flakes of dust and debris left behind by Halley's comet burning up in the Earth's atmosphere which by the way last visited us back in 1986. I will definitely be out, should be warmer and no full Moon, I'm there. Look to the East-South East just above the horizon 4:00 am May 5th.



I'll leave you with yet another Moon with earthshine animated gif taken during it's last crescent phase.

Total Lunar Eclipse

Well another total Lunar Eclipse has come and gone and guess what, I was able to view it, oh happy day! The images I took above are from the top to bottom; totality, almost totality, start of totality and start of the eclipse.

When I woke up Monday morning I noticed the Moon was smack dab in the middle of the neighbor's trees, I had to formulate a plan of attack if I was to view and take pictures of the eclipse. My options were, the school ground or the park just down and across the street from me. Then as I was pulling into work, it hit me, the mall where I work would be perfect, wide open view of the south west sky and my own personal security guard, score! The next hurdle I would have to overcome is how I was going to get my Big A_ _ scope, that's right my big Arm scope, because that's what I break every time I move it; to the mall, an employee friend of mine

volunteered the use of his truck, problem solved.

Now there was the small problem of the forecast, the weather channel was saying rain , but the Clear sky clock, which is very accurate for a 24 hour time period, said the weather would be clear for Saskatoon between 1 and 5 am, I told my wife this and she laughed, probably thinking poor crazy Bob. At 9:30pm, T-5.5 hours and counting, it was raining, I was thinking, stupid rain, stupid clouds, stupid hobby and stupid clear sky clock. and went to sleep. I woke up at 1:30am to head over to the mall and put the time in just in case hell froze over, and to my surprise I had clear skies! Yes Clear Sky Clock rules!

So I get to the mall set up the scope, get my own security guy and we wait. Well of course while we're waiting I proceed to tell the guard all about eclipses, how the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon and casts a shadow on to the lunar landscape and it's orange and brown because Earth's atmosphere scatters and absorbs the blues and allows the reds of the Sun's light through to the Lunar surface, we then got into Quantum Mechanics and Superstring Theory, well I did anyways but I could tell he was just soaking it all in. I don't know what happened to him, I went in to the office to get another eyepiece and when I came out he was gone, must have been called away to an emergency. Below is a pic of the scope and guard.

Check out Anna's site, she was going to be out this morning as well trying to get some pics of the eclipse, hope everything went well for her too. Actually my guard did come back, he finally started talking, he's a history buff, we got talking about the American civil war actually, something I am very interested in, great eclipse, great weather, and great conversation.