Harvest Moon

I took the above picture around 10:30pm September 26th. I was hoping to get a shot of the Moon as it rose from the horizon to get more of a yellow tinge to it, but unfortunately it had just finished raining, but I did get a real nice rainbow shot.

Never fear, I did get a good shot of the 98% Harvest Moon the night before as it was low on the horizon, has got a nice yellow tint to it. The pictures below illustrate the effect the atmosphere has on the color of the Moon. The top one was taken at 7:00pm, the one below it was taken at 7:24pm, the higher the moon is the less atmosphere it's light travels through, therefore less tint caused by the Earth's atmosphere. The picture below is one of my favorite pictures of the Moon I've ever taken. Since it was still a little light out when I took it, you can see the blue sky contrasting against the wall of the telescope, looks as if your looking through the window of the Lunar Crew Exploration Vehicle as your approaching the moon.

The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, in the northern hemisphere, this year it happens to be September 26th. Called a Harvest Moon because it rises as the Sun sets giving the farmers much needed light as they work long into the night to get their crop off, back in the olden days farmers never had lights on their tractors so the harvest moon was a welcome sight indeed. Anna over at My Only Photo took some great pictures as well check them out.

Tycho Crater , top left side of the Moon in the above picture, the major crater with the vast ray system, some reaching as far as 2000 kms, I've mentioned this crater a couple times before, what can I say it's my favorite. Tycho was in 2001: A Space Odyssey the book and the film, Tycho was a location for one of the monoliths, also in the film Star Trek First Contact, Tycho was the location of Tycho City.

To give you an example of how much the full moon lights up the night sky, I was up at 3:30am Wednesday morning to do some astronomy, it was going to be a warm night , by warm I mean 10 degrees C so I thought I'd take advantage of the last warm nights before winter and do some stargazing. I get outside and the moon is directly overhead casting it's blue gray glow over everything. My pod was actually glowing a blueish color, spooky yet beautiful. This strange moonlight is what our eye night sensitive rods pick up, which are 1,000 times more sensitive than our eye cones which are used for day viewing, but the rods are colorblind and are more sensitive to the blues more so then the reds. In astronomy we use averted vision, when we can't see something directly, we look off to the side of where we think the target should be and let our rods find the target, works all the time. The strange moonlight article has some cool sayings, "Moonlight steals color from whatever it touches" or "it's a bit like seeing the world through an old black and white TV set". Needless to say it was too bright that morning for viewing galaxies or nebulae, but the globular and open star clusters were magnificent as usual.

A Press Release issued last Thursday by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory stating a team of 5 astronomers has found a "mysterious" pulse from outer space, about 3 billion light years distant. It was a one time pulse lasting under 5 milliseconds. To date no other pulse or signal has the same characteristics as this one and as they put it "represents an entirely new astronomical phenomenon". The team had gone through approximately 500 hours of archival data recordings by Parkes Radio Telescope of Apollo 11 fame. Scientists are not sure exactly what they have found, could be anything from superdense neutron stars colliding to evaporating black holes. Right now no one knows or has seen anything like it, that's why it is so exciting.

Seeing In The Dark

" Sky-watching Tunes- Up Your Brain", when you view the cosmos your mind lights up, that is the general consensus of amateur astronomers interviewed in "Seeing In The Dark" a new film by Timothy Ferris . The film started showing on PBS last Wednesday. When viewing the cosmos we are amazed and humbled by the inability to put what your seeing into words. Professor Timothy Ferris states in the film "to see a galaxy is to see time". The show is a mixture of history, technology and art show with music. Timothy profiles more than 20 amateur astronomers, one being Michael Koppelman a record producer for Prince and Paula Abdul . NFL running back and amateur astronomer Robert Smith is also interviewed. The film is shot in 1080p High Definition, and let me tell you it looks great, saw it last night and I give it 5 stars. The main thing you pick up is the passion these amateur astronomers have for their hobby, An amateur astronomer who has been viewing the stars for 25 years states, "no matter how many times I look at Saturn through the telescope it blows my mind, takes my breath away".



Google Earth is getting a face lift. The launching of Digital Globe's WorldView-1 satellite will be able to give you the highest resolution allowed by the U.S. Government (20 inches). WorldView-1 can take tons of images faster as well. A Delta II rocket carrying the WorldView-1 lifted off September 18 at 11:35am PDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Google Moon also got a big update, better quality images. This website has photographs from various lunar orbiters and all the Apollo missions. All of the Apollo landing sites are on the maps, you can zoom onto added detailed high resolution images, showing points of interest that sometime include audio visual aids. You may want to check out Google Mars as well, cool site, check out the Face Of Mars , it has a little write up on it.

NASA is looking for new Astronauts, if you have multiple advanced degrees, a body of steel, experience flying jet aircraft and a strong stomach, have they got a job for you. NASA is accepting applications for the 2009 Astronaut Candidate Class. People who apply and are accepted may be either staffing the ISS or heading back to the Moon. The last time NASA recruited for Astronauts was back in 2004, they hired 11 U.S. candidates and 3 international people. Salary ranges from $59,000- $130,000 a year. The press release states the destinations you might travel to; " Texas, Florida, California, Russia, Kazakhstan, The International Space Station and the Moon.

Shirley at Way Cool Pictures posted about my Lunar Eclipse photos on her blog. That was just great thanks very much Shirley. I love her blogs, very cool pictures and a blog on Mandala Art
and Way Cool Quotes, don't know where she finds the time to do a great job on her sites.

Starting Out

"The man on the street does not know a star in the sky"
Ralph Waldo Emerson.



I remember it like it was yesterday, got my brand new scope, set it up outside to take a look at the Moon. The Moon was big and full and in plain view, this is gonna be an easy first target for me, being it was my first night out. Pointed the scope at the Moon looked in the eyepiece and presto .... the neighbours blurry tree, what went wrong? Well after reading the instructions which is something I usually leave to last, aligning this, moving that and thinking crap maybe I should have bought a car instead, I finally got my finder scope aligned with the main scope and the Moon was in my eyepiece, and it was beautiful, and I was hooked.


After looking at the Moon for lots of hours I thought, I need to look at something else. So I checked out Skyview Cafe. Saturn was going to be low in the east at 4:00am! Got up at 3:30 went outside, set up my scope and saw what looked to be a yellow star in the east just where skyview said Saturn would be. I thought that must be Saturn, pointed the scope using my finder scope at the little yellow light, held my breath, looked in the eyepiece, I couldn't believe my eyes, it was magnificent, just like in the pictures. The telescope had brought Saturn to life, the rings looked surrealistic, and you could see 4 of Saturn's 48 confirmed moons.

That evening my wife come and got me , took me outside, pointed to the night sky and said, should be good for your scope. I'm thinking wow look at all the stars, I only wish I knew some of them. Crash course, go down to my computer, print off some star charts from Skyview Cafe go outside and find some constellations. First one Hercules. The first thing I noticed when looking for constellations is they're a lot bigger in person then when you look at them on paper.

My next goal was to find the great Hercules Globular Star Cluster, how hard could it be? it is supposed to have 100's of thousands of stars in it, well 2 hours later I'd finally found it, learned some tricks along the way, oh well the journey is the fun part, right? Usually I hate journeys, they generally suck, I want to get to where I want to go now, hate journeys, but with astronomy I've found the journey to be the best part, for me that's remarkable.

Years later, the journey's been full of blood, sweat and tears, and I mean that literally, if there is a sharp edge on a scope I'll find it. I've found 100's of items, know all the constellations, I'm thinking, how do I get this cool stuff out to others, enter astrophotography. Little did I know the journey for astrophotography would be such a sucky one. This is where the tears come in.

April 2006 is when I got my first Deep Sky Imager. Basically, you put the camera in where your eyepiece would be, plug the imager into your laptop which in turn runs the camera and stacks the individual images to produce hopefully nice pictures that make you happy. Needless to say there is a lot more to it that requires you the smart human to do, which is beyond the scope of this post, or me at this time, hey it's the journey that counts. Below are some of my first images taken followed by my most current ones.

M42 The great Orion Nebula in the constellation Orion , is a birthplace for stars, can be found just under Orion's belt. The nebula is a cloud of ionized gas created by the young forming stars.
The top image was my first image taken last year, the image below I took yesterday.

M13 the great Hercules globular star cluster is located in the Hercules constellation is about 25,000 light years distant, contains several 100,000 stars, very old globular cluster, up to 15 billion year old stars! The top picture taken April/06, bottom April/07.




M57, the Ring nebula in the constellation Lyra. The dying central star produces the colorful ionized gases that create the planetary nebula, it is about 2,300 light years distant. The top image was taken in May /06, the bottom image was taken July this year.

"I'm into Astronomy, not Astrology"

So Bob how long have you been into Astrology, hmm let me think, ah, never. It's a question I've been asked many times before. It's like your talking to someone about the latest Star Wars movie and they say, oh, your a trekkie, for one it's trekker, and another, Star Wars and Star Trek are 2 different everythings, once and for all people, Darth Vader and Captain Kirk never fought together in any movie or tv series, Vader fought Jedi knights, Kirk, hung around with a lot of women, and fought Klingons, ..........anyhoo, I digress.

Back on topic, somewhere between 4,000 and 2,000 B.C. barbarism gave way to communal living and the development of agriculture became a priority, with recognition and prediction of the movement of the heavenly bodies,(seasons), man could plan when and where to plant and build dikes and canals to store water, in short, the heavenly bodies and their goings on in space, directly effected events on Earth (birth of Astronomy), It was only a small leap of faith to then assume that the events and movements of the heavenly bodies effected Earths people,(birth of Astrology). Astrology and Astronomy were basically indistinguishable for thousands of years up and until the time of, Sir Issac Newton. With his "Newton's Principia" Newton was first to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies in precise mathematical form which started the modern era of Astronomy. Even though I'm not into it I can appreciate the fact that Astrology influenced the birth of many sciences such as, mathematics, chemistry and biology. Ancients called anything falling from or seen in the sky, with the exception of the stars, moon, sun and five planets, "meteors" , first there was "aerial meteors," consisting mainly of winds and clouds, then there was "aqueous meteors" consisting of rain, fog, dew and snow, finally there was the "luminous meteors", consisting of , rainbows, sundogs and moondogs, they eventually grouped everything together to become what we know today as meteorology. I still read my horoscope every once and awhile to see if it even remotely resembles my situation. Statements such as "you will come into some money this week", well I am always finding pennies that my boss throws away in the trash, actually ever since he caught me going through the garbage he has started putting them in my mailbox. To sum it up, Astronomy is discovering and understanding our universe, Astrology is using the universe to predict the future so as to control our own destiny.

Meet Frank the Moon

Short and sweet post, I just had to fill you in on a new Saturn moon, so far they have named it "Frank" . This is Saturn's 60th. moon, Jupiter is leading at the moment with 62. The 2 gas giants have been battling it out for the most moons for years, its been a back and forth thing for as long as I can remember. Just a little tidbit of info, if you could build a pool big enough for Saturn to fit in, it would float. Saturn's density is less than that of water since it is made up mostly of the light gases hydrogen and helium.

Wild Duck Star Cluster

A couple of nights ago I was outside and took a picture of my favorite open star cluster, the "Wild Duck Cluster". It is located in the constellation Scutum. Scutum is located right above the constellation Sagittarius. Both of these constellation are low in the south sky this time of year, (in the northern hemispere). I posted 2 pictures of the cluster, one with the outline around the duck, the duck's beak is in the middle and the wing tips are on each side of the beak, and one without the lines, since thats how you see it in the night sky. The cluster when viewed live is magnificent, It is a cluster I view every time out. Scutum is located in our Milky Way Galaxy, and when viewed through a good telescope there are thousands of pinpoint stars along with the brighter stars in the duck. The Duck was discovered by Gottfried Kirch of the Berlin Observatory in 1681. Back then he described it as a "small, obscure spot with a star shining through and rendering it more luminous". If you live in the city you need a good scope to spot it, out of town it is just visible to the naked eye if you know where to look. The cluster is about 250 million years old, consists of serveral dozen stars and takes about 6,200 years for its light to reach us! "Sky View Cafe" is a good tool to find constellations and various deep sky objects, just input your location and and it will give you a star chart for that date and time.

Passion For Astronomy

Passion is defined in the Oxford dictionary as "Strong emotion; outburst of anger (flew into a passion); sexual love; strong enthusiam (for thing, for doing), object arousing this". My passion for the cosmos has driven me to start this blog and try to relate feelings about astronomy I don't even understand. I'm an enigma, an introvert whose not a writer or an intellect but has his own blog, go figure. For an introvert clicking that publish button is like speaking or even dancing in public, its a huge deal, your laying it on the line for everyone to read. But when I'm by myself under the stars nothing else seems to matter, for that moment in time it's my universe, no one elses. When I look at a star cluster, I'm not thinking, how far away it is, how many stars it has or even how old it is, I'm thinking, wow, thank you God for putting it there for me to find. Through the internet I have found many friends with passionate feelings towards all kinds of things and they too have found a way to share how they feel through their blogs and websites. Friends like Rose sharing her time and effort and answering all my questions.
Unique sites such as Aura's Encounters With The Unexplained, or my favorite tv show next to Battlestar Galactica , Jericho, all have their own individual passions and are trying to share a piece of what makes them tic.

m57Lyra

Check out m57Lyra. I was just surfing the net for blogs and come across m57Lyra's profile, I thought wow m57 is in the constellation Lyra, this person's got to be into astronomy. The person was still in the process of being approved so I kept on checking back until she was finally approved. Once approved I ventured over to take a peak and she has a couple of sites well worth your visit and comments. Being new everybody needs a little help so I thought I would throw a little traffic her way (very little, seen my blogroll, but what a blogroll Jerhico rules!). I asked her why she chose m57Lyra as a name, she said it was her first target she found on her own. M57 (m stands for messier, Charles Messier cataloged 110 various deep sky objects back in the 1700's). M57 holds fond memories for me as well, as it is my 2nd deep sky object I found by myself beside the great Hercules m13 globular star cluster. The light from m57 takes about 2,300 years to reach us, so you are looking back in time 2,300 years when you are viewing it. The central star, a white dwarf star is in its later stages of life and is releasing its atmosphere into space, making up the beautiful colors of the nebula. You can see the white dwarf in my pic I posted, this image was taken from my backyard last year.

If You Could, Would You?

Well pop star Moby is, rock guitarist Dave Navarro is and singer Robbie Williams is considering it. What am I talking about you may ask, flying into space. For only $207,000 your wishes could come true. The very thought of flying sends shivers down my back, yet I would be the first in line for space travel if I had the resources and opportunity. I figure with flying there is a good chance your comming back, so I spend my entire time on the plane worrying if we're going to crash and burn. With Space travel, your butt strapped to a rocket which was probably developed and built by the lowest bidder, I know I'm gonna die, just accept it and hang on for the wildest ride of your life. To be in orbit around the earth would be the ultimate experience, talk about bragging rights. Check it out Space Flight.

E.T. phone home

Do your part, use your pc for the search for aliens. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

More Pics

Here are a few of my favorite astrophototography pics I have taken with my computerized scope and Deep Sky Imager from my backyard in the city. The top image is a globular star cluster in the Hercules Constellation containing several hundred thousand stars, the next image down is the Sun showing a huge plasma ejection, the next images are the Dumbbell and Ring Nebulas.