National Geographic Mars Rovers Special

Just a heads up people, mark your calendars and get the popcorn going for this Sunday night November 2 at 8:00 pm ET for three hours of Mars, the Rovers and the search for aliens on The National Geographic Channel.

The premier of Five Years On Mars gets things rolling. Journey with the little rovers Spirit and Opportunity on what was to be a 90 day mission on the red planet that has now lasted nearly 5 years. Using computer generated high-definition photorealistic animation you'll see how the rovers conquered mechanical failures and the harsh Martian environment to send back literally 100s of thousands of images and enough scientific data to keep scientists busy back here on Earth for years to come.


Very cool, right near the beginning of the show it cuts to a scene of a bunch of scientists all wearing 3D glasses looking over some assembled 3D images taken by the rovers. Well anybody that has read this blog will know that I am one with all things 3D, ........ I so want a job where I have to wear 3D glasses, I can't imagine... well maybe a little.

Intercom system: "ATTENTION! ATTENTION! would Bob Johnson please report to the 3D mission room and bring your 3D glasses with you, there is a lot of 3D scientifical discoveries to be made that will benefit all humankind and we need your expertise and 3D glasses, thank you.... and have a nice day".


Immediately following Five Years on Mars will be an encore showing of Life On Mars, then the premier of Calling All Aliens, about how we are reaching out to the heavens in hopes of one day making alien contact, speaking of which do you remember Jodie Foster in the movie Contact?
well you'll meet the lady her character was based on, Jill Tarter the director of the Allen Telescope Array.


Partially funded by Paul Allen co-founder of Microsoft, the Allen Telescope Array is used by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), 24/7 to collect and monitor datastreams from outer space to see if anyone not of this Earth is trying to make contact.

All in all a great night with 3 awesome programs you won't want to miss. Right now the Canadian dates and times aren't confirmed, once I find out I will update this post.

Also as you're out Halloweening tomorrow night with the kiddies or just out by yourself, look low in the SW just after Sunset for a beautiful gathering of the crescent Moon and Venus.

I'll leave you now with an animation of the Full Moon and clouds.

Earthshine Refraction and Moon Illusion

Actually I went out just to capture the celestial gathering of Saturn and the Moon, the image below, when by chance I got a cool image of a squashy honking big brown Moon, may not be the proper astronomical terms, but the Moon looked astronomical none the less.

Notice the Moon's flat bottom, this is caused by the refraction of the Moon's light back onto itself from all the dust and water particles in our lower atmosphere, kind of bends the light upwards onto itself. The same particles scatter the blues of the Moonlight and allow the reds through to be seen by us, hence a red brown Moon. Then we have what we call the Moon illusion, because the Moon being so close to the ground, our mind by comparing it to the Earthly surroundings make the Moon seem very large.


The Earthshine is caused by the Sunlight reflecting off the Earth onto the Moon lighting up the Moon's night side, the bright part of the Moon we see in the images is the Sunlight reflecting off the Moon directly to us, what we call Moonlight.


Below are some more Moon with Earthshine images I took on my outing.







Just a reminder if you want to enter the "Find and Photograph The Daytime Moon Contest" now is the time to take your Pics. The Moon will be in it's New Moon Phase tomorrow but will start waxing to larger crescents after that, closing date will be November 3rd, lots of opportunity to get your daytime crescent Moon and maybe even win 50 pairs of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, think of the possibilities, all the 3D parties you could throw, great stocking stuffers, boggles the mind.

I'll leave you now with an animated daytime crescent Moon complete with clouds.

The Orionid Meteor Shower

WOO HOO, finally a break in the clouds, mind you it was going to happen between 1 am and 6 am but it would give me lots of time to catch the Orionid Meteor shower and get some pics.

Woke up later then I expected, 3 am, no problem, jumped out of bed, had my coat on already, start driving to my spot, drive back to pick up my camera I forgot, get to my spot again, the show was about to start.



Set up my camera, grabbed an image of the earthshine Moon, above image, changed lens to my fisheye and start taking pics, all this happening within 20 minutes of me waking up, a new record!!!

As I'm leaning against my car in the cold, I had a thought, why not sit in the car out of the cold and take pics, my camera shutter button cable would be just long enough, so I place the tripod right against the passenger side door, enter the car through the drivers side, crawl over the stick shift, my foot hitting the radio button blasting me into the heavens, hitting my head on the ceiling light, I was now officially awake, as I like my music very loud.

Then as I was looking at the cameras LCD screen I noticed everything was out of focus, forgot to focus when I changed lens, no problem, I squeezed through the window and car frame to adjust the focus, almost reached the lens focus ring when I got stuck, something on my person got stuck on something on my car, I tried to back up into the car when I found there was no give, alright I thought to myself, I've been in worse situations, time to work the problem.

Got one hand in the car after much struggle to find out a string on my jacket zipper had hooked the window handle and had to be lifted up and off, seems easy enough, all this wouldn't have happened if only I would have had the window all the way down, but nooooo, I didn't want to let any cold air in, so I finally free myself get back in the car start taking pictures again and find, gee it's out of focus, repeat everything except this time I open the window all the way and focus the camera.


Every October and May the Earth travels through the dust trails left behind by Halley's Comet, as the dust particles smash into our atmosphere at speeds of up to 160,000 mph they excite or light up our atmospheric atoms creating what we call meteors.


In October we call them the Orionids, in May the Eta Aquarids. Even with the Moon out I was able to spot around 20 an hour, an excellent showing for the Orionids this year. On average they were small and fast except for a couple, the meteor in the image above, behind the tree was almost like a fireball, lit up the sky.


The above image is a daytime crescent Moon, I took this one 5 hours after the above earthshine image, if you're interested in winning 50 pairs of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, and who isn't, now is the time to take a pic of the Moon is in it's daytime crescent phase and enter it in the "Daytime Crescent Moon Contest" closing date is November 3rd.

I'll leave you now with an animated image of the Moon crossing paths with a jet.

The Many Faces Of The Hunter's Moon

October's Full Moon is called the Hunter's Moon because it provided light to the early Native Americans to hunt their prey in preparation for the coming winter months. Actually the September, October and November Moons hang high and long in the Northern Hemisphere's night sky for a couple of reasons.


One is because of our changing seasons the Earth's Northern Hemisphere is starting to point away from the Sun and towards the Moon during it's Full Moon Phase, the Moon is opposite the Sun in the sky at this time, and two, the Moon's orbit around the Earth during these months favors the Northern Hemisphere.


So I was able to image the Moon from daytime, to evening wispy clouds, to cloudy skies, to clear skies, all in one night.




Winter is fast approaching as well for the Phoenix Lander. The lander is now working on it's 145 Martian day and is slowly loosing the Sun's energy it needs to power it's instruments as the Sun is setting earlier every day behind the horizon. The lander's robotic arm delivered yet another sample to one of it's ovens for analysis , they are trying to get as much done before the lander finally shuts down. The Phoenix Lander has accomplished a lot, from it's rocket landing, to studying the climate of Mars and seeing falling snow for the first time on another celestial body to actually finding ice water, an extremely successful mission.

I'll leave you with a clip I put together of the October Full Moon Rise, comprised of 126 images over a real time frame of 10 minutes.

Lunar Meteorites

Lunar Landscape, August 2008


In celebration of the 40th. anniversary of the Apollo missions to the Moon I am going to post some cool images of some Lunar meteorites.

You may remember...or not depending whether or not you're a Lunar fanatic like I, Gene Cernans' , the last man on the Moon, words he spoke as he was climbing the ladder of his Lunar Module for the last time, December 14 1972, "America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow" ...well maybe not so much. One only has to look here instead of here to find where our priorities lie.


Lunar meteorites come to us courtesy of by chance some other meteorite striking the Moon sending rocks and debris out into space, to be captured by the Earth's gravity, then to strike through our atmosphere as a meteor to land and become a Lunar meteorite.

The above image is Lunar meteorite NWA (North West Africa) 4881, found near Algeria in 2005. I love the texture and look of this meteorite, looks like it is covered in cellophane, very otherworldly looking, like it is.


The above Lunar meteorite is Dhofar 910, found in Oman in 2003. It is classified as a Feldspathic glassy-matrix fragmented breccia from the Lunar highlands, really all I know is it looks like an icy cratered planet through a microscope. I guess what I'm trying to do by holding Lunar rocks and taking images is hold on to something that has long been forgotten, the days of Lunar exploration.

Just in case you're interested, the Orionid Meteor Shower takes place October 20-22, look to the east starting around 11:00 pm on each of those days for the show to start, the Moon will be out as well but you should still see around 20 or so meteors an hour.

The video below is a clip I put together of these two Lunar meteorites, imagine yourself in a spacecraft orbiting another celestial body as you are watching it.