Sunrise Images and A Total Solar Eclipse

I am so sick and tired and tired of being sick and tired of winter, it's either frigging cold or it warms up only to snow. The weather here needless to say has not been cooperating with my celestial viewing habits, missed the Lunar/Pleiades conjunction earlier this month and this morning missed the Lunar, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars conjunction due to clouds, all was not lost though, the clouds which prevented me from seeing and imaging the planets allowed me to capture a beautiful Sunrise.


Atmospheric refraction stretched out the bottom of the Sun giving the it a cool oblonged shape.



Even got a Green Flash.




As well as a Red Flash


I'm hoping the weather will work with me March 2, the next major conjunction. Look to the West the evening of March 2 for another gathering of the Moon and Pleiades, they will be close together most of the night in North America but will be their closest together as the pair sets together around 2:30 am CST.

We had a penumbral eclipse February 9, oh and by the way I missed it as well due to clouds. A Penumbral eclipse is when the Moon passes through the Earth's penumbral shadow, what you see is a slight Earth shadow on the Lunar surface making part of the Moon look darker. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency released what the event looked like from the Moon. Using Kaguya's, High Definition camera, the orbiter captured a beautiful image of what we know all too well , the diamond ring effect that happens during a Total Solar Eclipse here on Earth, very pretty.

Kaguya is Japan's Lunar Orbiter who's mission it is to gather data such as the Moon's mineralogy and geographic data as well as magnetic and gravity field information so as to better understand the Moon's origin and evolution. Kaguya is expected to ends it's mission with a controlled fall to the Lunar surface sometime in June. I'll leave you now with a clip of the event.

Meteorites and Terrorists

Microscopic Thin Slice NWA 2140-CV3 Meteorite

The above image is a thin slice of a North West African meteorite put together at the All- Russian Geological Institute (VSEGI) thin section workshop. Quite interesting how they make thin sections, they cut down a thin slice of a meteorite, glue it on a microscopic slide then grind it down further so light passes through it so mineral composition research can be done on it. Got my hands on some slides and took some images with my microscope, notice the little black spherules, one theory is when a meteor breaks up and dissolves coming through our atmosphere the spherules survive because of their smallness and low surface area to become micrometeorites to land in your backyard to be collected be me as the below image.

Apparently I'm not the only one collecting meteorites from North West Africa, aka the Sahara Desert, Evil doer terrorists have finally caught on to the value of rocks from space, it's all about supply and demand, meteorites are very rare and there are tons of private collectors with lots of money willing to pay top dollar for these precious space rocks not knowing or caring that they are funding terrorist activities. Now why North West Africa meteorites? Well in the Sahara you have the perfect backdrop for finding meteorites, they stand out, no ground cover to hide the falls and the climate is such that there is no erosion for up to 50,000 years, and they even have maps of the best locals to find them, all the legal finds have to record the area in which the meteorite was found, below image.

Scientists are a little ripped about having to compete with the private collectors to obtain material for scientific research, there is a lot they can learn from meteorites such as the early formation of the solar system and our planet over 4.5 billion years ago. Some institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution won't import meteorites from North Africa knowing this area has become a haunt for smugglers and terrorists. So what can we learn from all this, well for one thing I am not a terrorist, don't belong to any cell group I'm aware of, and I have come by my NWA meteorite by legal means, but also if a meteorite lands on your car or house, it's all good, just think of the money you can make, take care of the deductible and money left over.

I'll leave you with an infrared animated image of a Sunrise I took a couple days ago.

Red Moon Rise

The day after the Total Lunar Eclipse was perfectly clear, a good time to try and capture a 98% of Full Moon Rise. The Moon was scheduled to rise at 7:40 pm, a perfect time, just the right darkness. So I head out to my dark location on the outskirts of the city. I'm driving along and there is a truck in front of me. Just up ahead of us is my little pull off the road area where I usually park my car and set up to take pics. We are getting closer and the truck slows down and pulls into MY spot, I don't think so, it's my spot, I pull in along side of the truck and notice it's full of people, 2 in the front, 2 in the cab, probably up to no good. As I'm pulling in they're all staring at me, and I'm staring back at them, its a stare down, people this is my spot and I'm staying, not leaving. So after what seems like an eternity the driver says something like fine, but not fine and speeds out, I win.

So I get out of my car, only after I can no longer see their truck and set up my tripod and look to the east for what I hoped to be a red Moon Rise. A little bit of background on the color of the Moon at rising. During the day the Sun heats the Earth causing turbulence which creates or lifts more dust into the lower atmosphere, this dust scatters the blues and allows the reds of the Sunlight or Moonlight through to be viewed by the observer here on Earth, that's also why Sunsets are generally more colorful then Sunrises.

Back to the story, I notice that the Moon is starting to rise, but behind a bunch of trees, good news it is going to be red, bad news, by the time it gets over the trees it will no longer be red, so I have to pack up and leave my hard fought for spot to find an area off the side of the road to get the proper angle to image the red Moon. I find a spot, of course there is no place to pull over except for the ditch so I keep the car running with the parking lights on to prevent people from running into the car and me as I'm taking the pic.

The Moon is in the perfect location for me and is red, I'm happy and I start taking the pics, as I'm doing all this I notice a truck pull up behind me slowly, crap it's the no goodniks from before, they stop and they stare at me, I don't stare back, that would be bad, I look ahead at the Moon, thinking, should I casually run back to the car or stay there and continue to take pictures.

They continue to stare, I'm finished and turn the camera off, grab the tripod and start to walk back to the car. The last count there were 4 of them, let me see I can maybe take out zero of them, but I am packing a camera and tripod, could throw them at someone. As I was walking back to the car I looked up at them and smiled they didn't return the smile, just stared, I then remembered the driver's last word to me wasn't fine. Finally made it to the car got in and locked the doors, they then sped off and I started to breath again. Got home and the pics turned out great, was it worth it, well in the end it turned out fine, next time someone pulls into my spot, they can have it.

I'll leave you now with one of my favorite Sunrises I just took this morning. I really like the way the Sun lit up the landscape and the plant life at the front of the the image.

Venus, Mercury and The Crescent Moon Conjunction

Got a cool shot this morning of the 5% crescent Moon and Venus, Mercury unfortunately was washed out by the glare of the rising Sun. The oddest thing happened to me as I was taking one of my images, this wild white and gray rabbit goes whizzing by me about 10 yards in front of me, went looking for it after the long exposure shot, but he was long gone.

I love these kind of conjunctions, don't need any equipment to see them , everybody can enjoy them, pretty cool to see a crescent Moon and Venus during daytime, the scene was almost surrealistic with a fine early morning mist adding to the photo op. Mercury would have been in between the Crescent Moon and Venus. Some more conjunctions coming up are, The evening of March 14, a gathering of the Moon, Mars and an open star cluster M35 will occur for all of Canada. The Moon and Mars will meet up again April 11th, if you live in Labrador and Northern Quebec you will see Mars partly covered by the Moon, should be very cool. The evening of April 8th. if you live in North America look to the west during twilight to get an awesome view of the Moon illuminated with Earthshine sitting beside and covering some of the stars of the Pleiades, very cool. Finally April 27th. look to the South East early morning to see the Moon passing just under Jupiter a beautiful morning star at that time in Sagittarius.

An awesome image of an avalanche happening on Mars was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). An image of ice, rock and dust falling from a cliff over 2,300 ft high in the Martian Northern Polar region was captured February 19th. and released March 3rd. Scientists are saying it is great to see something so dynamic happening on Mars, a lot of what they see on Mars hasn't changed for millions of years. No one is really sure what caused the avalanche, some figure it is the result of the changing seasons happening on Mars right now. Regardless of the cause it is a good example how the Martian surface can change very fast. What scientists learn from this could give them a better understanding of the water cycle on Mars. It might interest you to know that over 2,400 images were released March 3rd, including the image below of a blue crescent Earth and Moon taken as well by the Orbiter.

I'll leave you now with a beautiful Sunrise I captured the other day, showing a Solar pillar and some Sun dogs.