The Great Prairie Meteorite Search

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.

Winter Solstice Sunrise and Sunsets

Being the winter Solstice and all yesterday I thought I would take some pics of the winter solstice Sunrise, plus the fact that it was -39c and woo hoo no wind, I thought to myself maybe I could capture some crazy shaped refracted Sun shots. The Sun didn't disappoint. Sunlight is refracted due to the different densities and pressures in our lower atmosphere causing the light path to be trapped, blocking some of the sunlight from getting to our eyeballs, seems with the really cold temps this is even more so making for some interesting shapes of the Sun.


I knew from the rising Sun that I was in for some strange looking Suns, notice what looks like a solar flare popping off the top of the above image. Now when it is -39c with no wind it can be kind of deceiving, doesn't really feel cold without the wind burning into your face, in fact you don't really know how dangerous the cold is up and until just before you fall asleep and die.


After 20 minutes out in this stupid cold temperatures my camera started making some funny noises and the shutter sounded like it was going to blow up and start on fire, so I go to turn the camera off when I noticed my fingertips had no feeling, grab the camera and start running back to the warmth of the car when I noticed my toes were numb, great I'm going to fall asleep and die next. Finally made it back to the car alive and well, next time I'm going to stay in the car regardless of how it feels cold wise.


Eight hours later I was out at it again, this time Sunsets. I call the above image my Christmas ornament Sunset due to the fact it looks like a Christmas tree ornament, Merry Christmas from me to you, print it off and hang it on your Christmas tree. It had warmed up to -26c and I was able to stay in the car while taking the pics but my finger tips were still burning from the morning before.


Got some funky looking Sunsets plus I got an image of the rare Greenflash! Only lasted for a few seconds, hence the term flash.

Greenflashes appear just before Sunrises and just after Sunsets. The high frequency waves of the greens/blues curve more then the lower frequency reds allowing them, the green light to remain around to be viewed by us, the reds are obstructed by the curvature of the Earth.


The Ursid meteor shower is on right now, actually peaks tonight, and you won't have the Full Moon to contend with, but there is only 15 an hour or so but I'll still be out trying to get some meteor images. If you are crazy like me look in between the Little and Big Dippers, in the north part of the sky around 10:00 pm. If your not crazy but you still want to get into the action visit this site!! It is the Air Force Space Surveillance Radar in Texas, got the link from Spaceweather.com. Listen to meteors fly over the radar, very cool and unearthly sounding, it is a live feed so you may have to wait for a while to hear your first warrble sounding meteor, very cool.

I'll leave you now with an animation of one of my Solar Pillars. I probably won't post till after Christmas so I just like to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas.

Lunar Halos, Perigee Moon and Geminid Meteor shower

'Tis the season, season for Solar/Lunar Halos, Sundogs and Solar Pillars. I took the above image from my front yard. Halos are caused by the Moonlight/Sunlight being refracted off the hexagonal ice crystals in the high wispy cirrus clouds which refract the Moon 22 to 50 degrees producing the halo, 22 degrees around the Moon, from the Moon to the inner edge of the halo covers 22 degrees of the sky. I made sure I got the houses in the same frame as the halo, gives you some kind of perspective on how big these things are. The cool thing about the above image is as people were walking by they were asking me if something was going on in the sky, I then pointed to the halo and got a lot of wow's , that's beautiful never noticed it. They are so fleeting that unless you are looking for them they go unnoticed, we in our busy day rush from point A to point B never noticing the beauty of the Earth and sky around us, never really stop to look at the halos, smell the roses.



I had mentioned about Lunar Halos in my previous post so Genie decides to look for them , finds one, and gets her first image of one, great job Genie!!


I had also mentioned about the biggest Full Moon of the year occurring last Friday , I had clouds so I couldn't get a pic for you, but once again Genie comes through with a cool picture of it, again way to go Genie!!!


Well we are on the topic of readers pics, Majase Cyc sent me a Solar Pillar image. Solar Pillars happen when plate like ice crystals reflect the Sunlight creating the Pillar, what I like about this image besides the pillar is the crazy cool depth of field, everything seems to be in focus no matter the distance, very striking, do yourself a favor and check out Majse Cyc's sites very very unique and interesting.



Another reader image above, Moonshadow just got her Canon 40D, same camera as me, hey it rhymes, back from the shop and was lucky to capture the Perigee Full Moon, great atmospheric shot with the trees and clouds.


-34c, but feels like -45c, that's the temp at 3:30am Saturday December 13, the peak of the Geminid meteor Shower, and yes I was out taking pics of meteors, call me crazy, crazy like a fox! I have a system , I set up my camera just outside the drivers side window of my car and take images using my shutter release cable, thing is, even then I was too cold, if I keep the window closed I can't really actually see the shower, so I had to leave it open a bit, and at "it feels like -45c" it gets cold, not biting cold in the car, but still cold and talk about tricky getting from the passenger side to the drivers side to operate the camera and make adjustments if needed on the camera, I have to lift my leg over the stick shift not once but twice since I have 2 of them, this time I pulled a muscle, Crap I am such a klutz, honestly it's amazing I've made it this far in life without poking my eye out with a stick, seriously.

So I finally get all set up and take pics of some meteors, NOOOOOOOO, after just 20 minutes the battery is toast, put my other one in thinking, wooo, glad I got another battery, and the same thing happens, 20 minutes and it's done, the wind chill factor taking it's toll. So I go home charge them both up and back out again. I do this a couple times and then it's time to upload to the computer.

I know I got some good shots, the shower itself was okay, but as you can see from the above image, the nearly Full Moon was right in the middle of the radiant constellation Gemini, you can see Castor and Pollux just off the top left of the Moon, add in all the ice crystals and you get a whole lot of white, wiping out a lot of the meteors.

So I get home and start to upload the images, and my computer freezes!! I ended up with the first 10 and a half images, none of course had any meteors on them, never did recover them, sucks.



The image above was taken Sunday night, went back out before the Moon rose to see if I would have any better luck, at least I got a picture of a meteor, doesn't even look like a Geminid, too far from the Radiant, hey it's a meteor.

Leave you now with an animation of my Lunar Halo, put it through a Photshop filter called Plastic Wrap, why do that? because it looks cool, scary cool, like a big eye in the sky watching over us.

I'd like to take a moment here to thank the designer of my website Lady Omega for fixing the code for my Christmas tree countdown, there was a problem with part of the code showing over top the tree and no matter what I did I couldn't get rid of it, Lady Omega came to the rescue and made it all better.

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.

Mercury, Crescent Moon and Swarming Taurids

Before there was the Moon Venus Sunset gatherings, there was the Moon Mercury Sunrise gathering. Mercury being so close to the Sun we don't get to see it that often, May was the last time I was able to image Mercury, that time it was during a Sunset, image below. Well just last week I was able to capture a beautiful 3% Crescent Moon and Mercury complete with jet contrails, image above.




Lots of celestial stuff going on this month. Right now we have swarming Taurids till November 17th, that's right, apparently the the Earth is going through a swarm of space debris left behind by comet 2P/Encke, we go through the debris field left behind by comet 2P/Encke every year producing the Taurid Meteor shower, but this year is a swarming debris field, producing more then average meteors. Also the Leonid Meteor Shower peaks November 17, for both showers look to the East around Midnight for the shows to start. On November 13th we have a conjunction of the Full Moon and the Pleiades Star Cluster, look to the NE around 7:00pm EST for this conjunction.


So after my whiney crybaby complaining poor me I have no entries in my Find And Photograph The Daytime Moon Contest gonna go to my room and eat my worms post a lot of people sent in their photos, cool, problem is I have to judge them now, geez I never think things through, so unbenounced to my wife, she is going to help me judge them and choose a first and second place winner. I told her the other day I had some entries in my blog contest, she gives me that YIKES look and says "You have a blog?", just kidding, she knows I have a blog, but she still gave me that YIKES look, come to think of it I get that look a lot, especially when I told her 1st place wins 50 pairs of Hanna Montana/ Miley Cyrus 3D glasses. I will announce the winners and post all the entries in my next post, either Monday or Tuesday next week.

I'll leave you now with a Crescent Moon and Jupiter gathering animation I took a couple nights ago, see if you can spot Jupiter.

Sikhote-Alin Meteorite

If you like old black and white Russian documentaries with English subtitles, boy have I got the film for you. Back in February of 1947 a huge meteorite fell to Earth in the Russian Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range. The Russians sent in a crew to retrieve and document the fall, the above movie is part of the documentary. I got permission to put the movie on YouTube from the person who did the subtitles, it is condensed down to nine and a half minutes to fit on YouTube, if you want to download the whole 18 minutes you can go to the originating web site here.

The Sikhote-Alin meteorite was witnessed by many people, it made a huge smokey trail and bang that could be viewed and heard for 30 km around the impact zone. The impact made 30 craters and left 28 tonnes of material behind.



The image above are a couple of actual Sikhote-Alin meteorites, the one on the left is called meteorite shrapnel because it looks like twisted bomb shrapnel, the meteorite on the right is a small individual piece of the meteorite, both were gathered back then.






The images above are pictures taken under a microscope of the meteorite at 40 times magnification. Witnesses say it looked like a bright star then turned into a fireball leaving a large smoke trail behind, it entered the Earth's atmosphere at around 31,000 mph. The samples are quite heavy and magnetic as they consist of around 90% iron.


October 6 the Messenger Probe will make another flyby of our planet Mercury. This will be the second flyby of our little planet by the probe. Messenger will come to within 125 miles of it's surface to gather another gravity assist to slow it down for the eventual orbit of Mercury in March 2011.

Messenger has 6 major scientific questions to try and answer.

1. Why is Mercury so dense?

2. What is the geological history of Mercury?

3. What is the nature of Mercury's magnetic field?

4. What is the structure of Mercury's core?

5. What are the unusual materials at Mercury's poles?

6. What volatiles are important at Mercury?

Once in orbit Messenger will gather data to try and answer the above questions, the mission is slated to last for one year, ending March 2012.

I'll leave you now with a Sunset I took a couple nights ago, the Sun is slowly setting earlier everyday, a sign that winter and the minus 40c weather is on it's way, so sad.

Bobaids Meteor Shower

I hadn't planned on getting up at 1:00 am Saturday May 31st, I had been out the night before and got some images of the stars and our galaxy and thought I'd take it easy and actually sleep a whole night, but I awoke at 1:00 am and wasn't tired, so I thought why not, maybe an aurora or something cool, so off I went with my camera to explore the cosmos once again.

So I'm pulling up to my site and a huge meteor appeared while I was getting out of the car, shoot me now, missed it, set up the camera and the meteors started, just kept coming, better then any major shower I'd ever seen, man I lucked out.



Not only was there lots of meteors but because the Moon didn't rise for a couple hours the Milky Way wasn't washed out, and , Jupiter and an aurora were out as well making for a great photo op.

Notice in the image above the very large meteor in the bottom right of the frame, I was looking away as my camera was taking it's 60 second exposure and I still noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye. Since there is no major shower at that time I have named it the Bobaids Meteor Shower, after moi. Like I said I was out the night before and notta, I went out the next night and notta, and the shower only lasted a couple hours that night, so go figure, must have gone through some kind of debris field, you better believe I'll be out next year to check it out again, may have stumbled on to something.

The picture above I like to call 4 toes, it is an imge of the track left behind by the Phoenix's arm scooper. Scientists are practicing using the scooper especially since they temporairily lost one dump which they found through images taken by the onboard camera, the last thing they want to do is drop the scoop of soil on the lander or it's solar panels, that would surely suck. Consider what they are up against, because they are milions of miles away they are issuing the instructions or commands in the morning and getting back the results to see how it went in the evening, also some of the Martian soil for whatever reason got stuck in the scooper, again if they think the scoop is empty, may lead to an accidental dropping of the stuck soil where they don't want it. So for today, they think they have spotted something white in one of the samples, could be ice could be salt, won't know for sure until they get it tested.

I'll leave you now with an animated May Full Moonrise.

Aquarid Meteor Shower

Got some super cool shots of the Aquarid Meteor shower, the Milky Way and Jupiter showed up to play. The weather was perfect, no wind and around +2c. At 3:30 Sunday morning it was very quite except for a lot of critter noises, there were, ducks, frogs, crickets and even birds were starting to chirp. There was another sound, what can I compare it to? you know the sound a monkey makes , you hear it in movies when you're in the Jungle, it goes "ooh, ooh, ooh, eeh, eeh ,eeh, ah, ah, ah, well this monkey or bird because I don't think we have wild monkeys in Saskatchewan, went "ooh,ooh,ooh,ooh,ooh,ooh,ooh,ooh,ooh, over and over again, like the whatever it was forgot the words.

The Aquarids are caused by dust particles left behind by Halley's Comet hitting our atmosphere at a high rate of speed and burning up, which by the way just made an appearence back in 1986. So as you're looking at the above meteors you are looking at a piece of Halley's Comet.

My daughter sent me the above image of the landscape around Kelowna which I will be visiting starting Saturday. One thing to note when comparing it to one of my above images..... it's not FLAT, which will be a nice change. They have a lot of activities planned for us, one being a trip suggested by livingsword to the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton.

The next post I do will be from the lovely city of Kelowna, probably Sunday. I'll leave you now with an animated gif of one of my better Milky Way shots.

Moon, Jupiter Conjunction

Sunday April 27th. in the early morning hours we had a Lunar, Jupiter conjunction, how early, well it started as the pair rose, around 2:47 am. That's right 2:47 am, now you'd think everyone in their right mind would probably be asleep at that time, unless and of course they knew of the conjunction, not so, it was a busy morning, all kinds of cabs driving people home from the bars, one of my spots is right across from an apartment complex, oh and there were a couple kids doing 360's in their cars behind me in the Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot, hey why not Shoppers had all their parking lot lights on through the whole night even though they close at midnight, I guess they aren't getting with the whole Earth Hour type thing.

The image above is a wide angle shot, notice the beautiful red Moon, people ask me, was the Moon really that red, yes,... yes it was, because the Moon was low on the horizon, its moonlight had to travel through more atmosphere, the atmospheric particles scatter the blues of the moonlight and allow the reds through , no photoshop adjustments, actually it was a darker red, almost couldn't see it, it is a lighter red in the image because of the 4 second exposure lightening it up some. The image below, an 8 second exposure again lightening the color.

Looking at these pictures can't convey the surrealistic feeling you have viewing it live and in person, it was unbelievable, the red Moon seemed to be floating in a sea of black, too cool.

I'm pretty excited, My wife and I will be taking a weeks vacation starting May 10th to visit my oldest daughter Amanda and boyfriend Dave in Kelowna British Columbia. They have two of the cutest, what my wife likes to call Granddogs, one being an Old English Sheepdog Great Pyrenees cross, the other a Newfoundland Great Pyrenees cross, Ill take pics and post. There should be plenty of photo ops with the beautiful weather, the mountains and since they live outside of town there will be lots of dark skies for star gazing, expect some cool photos.

A friendly reminder about the Eta Aquarids meteor shower Monday May 5th. 4 am, look to the Southeast just up from the horizon, then Tuesday May 6th look to the West-Northwest 45 minutes after Sunset for the Moon with earthshine, Mercury and Pleiades gathering.

I'll leave you now with an animated gif of one of my Moon, Jupiter pics.

Fireball in The Sky

So I was out trying to image another Sunset when out of the blue a fireball appeared. To give you some idea of how rare these fireballs are, a trained observer, such as moi, can expect to be treated to one, once every 200 observing hours, factor in that it was a daytime fireball, more rare, also factor in the fact it was close to the Sun, more rare again and....catch breath... the fact that I had a focused camera ready to go, and that I would actually capture an image just after the break up with an image of the fragments, the chances of this happening, well, it boggles the mind just thinking of it, well it boggles my mind, mind you I'm easily boggled.

I get home to process the images to see what I've got, cropped and enlarged the images, turned out quite good actually, something like NASA might have on CNN, well maybe not NASA.. or CNN, but you get the idea.

Fireballs come from a group of particles bigger then the usual specks of dust grains that cause your average meteor shower. They are caused by objects the size of pebbles people, unbelievable, but because of the high rate of speed they hit our atmosphere, up to 160,000 mph they create quite a show. Daytime fireballs usually have smoke trails which start at about 50 miles altitude, they usually burn out around 9-12 miles high. It is very rare that any of the meteoroid reaches the ground to become a meteorite because of something called Ablation, which is when the outer layers of the meteoroid continually vaporize due to the high speed collision with air molecules.

Just a reminder May 1st. Mercury and the Pleiades meet low in the NW. sky 45 mins after Sunset

I'll leave you now with an animated gif of my unbroke fireball.