Lunar Venus Conjunction

Was lucky to get break in the clouds to view a daytime crescent Moon and Venus come together April 22, added bonus... clouds, in just the right amount to add atmosphere. They, the clouds rolled back in just before the occultation, that is when the Moon actually covered Venus, but a daytime conjunction of the Crescent Moon and Venus is still a pretty picture.

That's not all, the Pleiades and little Mercury were and are as we speak also in conjunction very cool.



Click on the conjunction link above, it is the best description of a celestial conjunction ever, a conjunction is basically a temporary close gathering of two or more celestial bodies. To see the conjunction look to the west about an hour after Sunset, you'll see Mercury, as it will be the brightest object in the lower west sky, just above Mercury will be the Pleiades. They will be getting closer together till April 30, at which time they will start pulling away from each other, and drawing closer to the glare of our Sun, grab some binoculars if you can, the Pleiades are awesome through them.


From conjunctions to cats. When I first pulled up to the Marsden Hotel , where I was staying for the meteorite search, a cat ran up to me and rubbed against my legs...hey what can I say, some guys are chick magnets.... I'm a cat magnet, they love me , I love them. Anyways, 7 am the next morning there was a meowing at my window, the town cat was back, I let her in and we had tea, and surfed the net before the meteorite search, that's right, the Marsden hotel had high speed wireless internet technology.

I have been concerned about whether or not I'd be able to find wireless in China so as to post from there.... well if Marsden has wireless in their hotel, population 294, I'm pretty sure they have the technology over in Shanghai with a population of 14.6 million, I'm hoping in their Hotel rooms.

I'll leave you now with an animation of the Mercury/Pleiades encounter.

The Lunar Venus Conjunction

Finally, the heavens shone down upon me, we had clear skies, mind you -40c windchill, but still clear skies and was able to get some pics of the beautiful Lunar Venus conjunction last night.


I hope you all got to see it as well, Genie did and got a great pic. I decided to do something different this time, change my picture taking venue, went downtown.


It is amazing the amount of people walking, and jogging, that's right jogging around downtown at -40c with windchill. Had a lot of people stopping to see what was going on, I explained and pointed to the Moon and Venus, they all looked up and said things like I didn't know, or that is pretty, all of them thought Venus was a star, no worries, Astro Bob set them straight, gotta do my part for the International Year Of Astronomy 2009.


You'll notice I took a lot of images, hey not very often I get clear skies and an event at the same time, and with the forecast for snow and clouds this coming Monday for the Lunar Pleiades conjunction, I thought I would really go crazy with this one.


Spent nearly 4 hours imaging and traveling in the car to various places taking pics. Final stop was just outside of town where my horizon shots were taken.

Got a cool cloud effect on the Moon, notice the color starting to change from white to an orange as they start to set.


At Black hokes I always try to do something a little different every now and then, the image below certainly qualifies. All I did was download Paint.net processing software, in the program under effects there is something called "Polar Inversion" clicked on it, and it transformed one of my Lunar Venus image into something , well very different, lots of Moons, lots of Venuses and lots of trees..... good enough for mes.


Another positive, I was just reading on Universe Today, an excellent site, I highly recommend you subscribe to them, about the Obama administration going ahead with Bush's plan to put a man on the Moon by 2020. A pleasant surprise indeed, who knows they may still be in the race for the Moon.


I'll leave you with a clip I put together of 70 images, real time 10 minutes. Courtesy of Planetary Mechanics, the celestial pairing of the Moon and Venus setting in the west, a beautiful orange combo.

Journey To The Edge Of The Universe and more Conjunction Images

Geysers on Triton;


and Black holes in action;


bright colored matter;


and Solar attractions;

Nebulae, galaxies, stars in between, these are a few of my favorite things, bet you'll never guess which movie I was watching the other day. Anyways back on topic, you get to see all my favs above and more on the 2 hour premiere of "Journey to the Edge of the Universe" on the National Geographic Channel.

Very cool how through cinema quality CGI and the worlds best telescopes they take you from a couple people enjoying the night sky up through the atmosphere, to the Moon, Sun, planets then galaxies and beyond to the edge of the universe, all in one camera move.

Be prepared to board "spacecraft imagination", launch date this Sunday December 7, 7 pm EST.

Again the Canadian times are yet to be announced, will let you know as soon as I hear.

Well, the last couple of weeks have been space crazy around here, first with our famous Saskatchewan meteor, which by the way they have found quite a few pieces of , to the beautiful Venus, Jupiter Lunar conjunction, imaged and viewed by millions of people all over the world, everybody was getting involved, even my wife, as I was coming home after imaging the gathering she said "I saw your cute little conjunction!"........boy........, if I had a nickel every time I heard that.


The beautiful image above of the conjunction was taken by Genie, great job Genie! When there are special celestial occasions I will post any and all images from you the readers on my blog, and issue a free pair of Hanna Montana/ Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, while supplies last. My goal has always been to get people involved in and to enjoy the cosmos, and my new goal to one day have everybody outfitted with said 3D glasses. The upcoming Jupiter, Mercury and Lunar conjunction December 28/29, not as spectacular as the one that just occurred but it will more beautiful in it's subtlety, has Mercury in it, I love Mercury, always a challenge to view and even more difficult to image, the Moon will be a very small crescent making it all the more reason to try and catch it. For the conjunction look low in the SW just after Sunset on the 28/29. Also the Geminid meteor shower peaks next weekend, look to the east around 10:00 pm for the show to start, will be a Full Moon so won't see the maximum of 60 meteors per hour but again still worth a look.


The above image was taken by Anita with a Finepix S700 camera, great shot Anita! A pair of 3D glasses are on their merry way to you and yours.



Raymond, took the above image, super job!! hope you Genie and Anita enjoy your new 3D glasses, to break em in, try this cool NASA 3D image site.

I'll leave you now with a preview clip of Journey to the Edge of the Universe.

Venus, Jupiter and Luna Conjunction

Woo Hoo I got to see the conjunction, almost didn't. Hope some of you had the same luck I did, it was cloudy right up until the last moment but the clouds broke just in time and then only for awhile, hey, I was prepared to go down to Moose Jaw where it was supposed to be clear. When I told people at work my plans to travel 2 hours to see the gathering I got a lot of shaking of the heads and them saying BOB!, get that a lot. So maybe I am a little obsessed, and why not, lets take a look at this logically.


The stars, planets, Moon, are always on time, never late, never early, in other words very dependable. They keep on giving me their best and don't ask for anything in return, just that I show up, even then they could careless if I don't watch, my loss if I don't come to the latest show. No hidden agendas, they are what they are, a star doesn't try to be a planet and visa-versa, don't try to trick you in to believing there is a conjunction and then when you get there no ones around, what's not to like? Plus the gathering was just plain awesome. The images below are from the conjunction Sunday night.







The image below is the gathering from Saturday night, the tiny crescent Moon is hiding in the atmosphere in the lower right of the image. If anybody out there got an image of the conjunction, let me know and I will post it on my site and ship you a free pair of Hanna Montana/ Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, yeah, I still have a gazillion of them.



I'll leave you now with an animation of the 5% of Full Moon, taken Saturday night while the Moon was low in the atmosphere.

Comet Like Meteor, Conjunctions, The Sasktchewan Meteor And A Special Cameo Appearance Of The Runaway Tool Kit

Okay, I got a new favorite meteor image. You're probably thinking, Bob, it's a small one, you've taken better, well thank you, but this is my new favorite, just look at it, all comet like and cute and small and such, plus the way in how I captured it is very cool.

I was taking an image of the Venus Jupiter gathering when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a bright object moving very fast, fine I thought it was a jet at first, but it wasn't leaving any contrails behind, there were quite a few jets out that night and all were slower and left contrails, plus it was going back and forth, almost in a straight line, then vanishing.

Moved my camera towards the last spotted location, thinking great something cool and unusual, took a test shot, and waited, and waited but it never came back. Thought oh well probably some kind of UFO, or test jet, meteors or I was just seeing things.

The next morning I was going through my images of Venus and Jupiter, totally forgot about my encounter of the whatever kind when I noticed there was something on my test shot, a little comet like meteor. Now the ISO was 3200, exposure .25 seconds, so the chances of me catching a meteor in that time frame were slim to nil, very cool, so now it's my fav.


Here is your last notice from me for what NASA is calling the "Best sky show of the year", and it looks like I'm going to miss it, calling for clouds on that day here. On December 1 just after Sunset look to the South West for an awesome conjunction of the crescent Moon, Jupiter and Venus, Venus being just below and to the left of Jupiter and the Moon above the both of them.


The next major conjunction will be December 28th, The Moon, Jupiter and Mercury will be in a straight line grouping just after Sunset, again look to the South West for this gathering.

Just a little update on the Saskatchewan Meteor that occurred here November 20. There are all kinds of people looking for what they estimate to be hundreds of meteorites larger than 50 grams thought to have landed around the Saskatchewan Alberta boarder around Manitou Lake. One meteorite collector has offered $12,000 US for a kilogram sized chunk. If I didn't have work to contend with, that's where I would be, let me tell you.

I'm going to leave you now with a video of the ISS toolbag in space taken by satellite observer Kevin Fetter. To see the toolbag streak across the sky go here and type in your Postal or zip codes, it will give you the flyby times and the location in the sky. You will need binoculars, it will look like a faint moving satellite.

Venus, Jupiter, Moon Conjunction and The Saskatchewan Meteor

One week from tonight the Celestial conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Crescent Moon occurs. The above image shows Jupiter and Venus Getting closer together. The inside grouping of Venus and Jupiter was taken November 22, the outside grouping of Venus and Jupiter was taken November 20. You can see the two planets getting closer together and Venus, the bottom of the two starting to whip under Jupiter, the top planet.


The above image shows the Space station joining the grouping, taken November 23rd. Somewhere just behind the Space Station is the missing tool kit. While Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper was working outside the station she lost hold of it. To get the exact times of the flyby in your area go here and enter your postal or zip codes, it's actually quite cute, the site gives you various flyby times of satellites... and the toolkit. You will need binoculars to see it as it isn't all that big.

Now, I happened to be out taking an image of the Jupiter Venus gathering at 6:10 pm November 20. I had decided to call it quits early at that time because the wind was freezing my shutter release cable, thought, this is crazy, too cold, I'm going home, get in my car and head back into town. The next morning I hear almost everybody in the office saw this blinding meteor. I asked what time, the reply was 6:30, crap, if I only would have stayed another 20 minutes I probably would have got a shot of it, again all about being at the right place at the right time, which apparently was in your kitchen or living room looking outside.


The yellow area in the above map is the area in which there had been reported sightings. The size of the meteoroid has been estimated anywhere from the size of a baseball to a small car. To date nothing in the way of a meteorite has been found, but they figure if the meteor did land it would be along the Saskatchewan, Manitoba border.

The YouTube video below is what an Edmonton Police car cam captured, wow, talk about being at the right place at the right time. At the Mall I work at we have quite a few outside security cameras, I went through all the footage from that time frame, and found a bright flash on one of them, the meteor was just to the left of the camera, still cool, due to security reasons I can't show you the flash footage, no biggie anyways, just the flash.

Shuttle Endeavour Returns Home

Shuttle Endeavour and her crew landed safely at Kennedy Space Center at 8:39 EDT. STS 123's main missions were to deliver and install the first stage of the Japanese Kibo Laboratory as well as Dextre a special kind of mechanical maintenance robot that will be able to do basic repairs outside of the station without having to send an astronaut on a spacewalk, which is always potentially dangerous. The only slight problem the crew encountered was a ding the size of a small ball bearing on one of Endeavours windows that posed no threat to the Shuttle or her crew.

The Auroras from space

Dextre in action

Some interesting facts: STS 123 was the 122nd. Space Shuttle flight, the 25th. to the International Space Station, it was the 21st. flight for the Endeavour and the 2nd of 6th planned for this year. STS 124 Shuttle Discovery is the next flight to the station, it's main mission to deliver and install the main stage of the Kibo (hope) laboratory, launch date TBA.

UPDATE: NASA has just reversed the decision to cut the rovers funds, nobody knows for sure why the sudden reversal, could be the tremendous public outcry against the cuts, whatever the reason NASA has instructed the rover people to carry on as usual, like the cutback letter had never been issued.

Rover Opportunity pointed it's cameras overhead to image these cool cirrus like clouds, wispy clouds formed mostly of ice crystals. Mars surface ice warmed by Sunlight can briefly turn to vapour in Mars atmosphere and form into ice crystals. Due to budgetary cutbacks the Rover program has just been handed a 4 million dollar cutback which means one rover, probably Spirit will be shut down for the rest of the year. The rover people have also been told to expect another 8 million dollar cutback for 2009.


Venus, Mercury Conjunction March 24th, 2008

A conjunction I mentioned here between Mercury and Venus occurred a couple days ago, nearly didn't get the pic. due to some stubborn clouds hanging around, they finally moved and I got some images, bonus, got an image of a cool misty Moon on the opposite side of the horizon getting ready to set.

Venus, Mercury Conjunction March 24th., 2008

I'll leave you now with my misty Moon as an animated gif.

Lunar Halo and Mars, Moon Conjunction

Out on my back deck getting some images of the Mars , Moon conjunction last Friday night when I noticed that a lunar halo was starting to form, try to take a picture from my backyard, no go, with all the city lights there wasn't enough contrast, decided to get out of town, literally, not sarcastically, and get the pic. These things come and go real quickly so I run through the house with my camera and tripod telling my wife gotta go , take pictures. Ever since I got the Canon 40D I've been doing a lot of this up and leaving on such short notice, so my wife is used to it.

Get to my site, setup the tripod and camera, get the pics. Lots going on in the night sky, there was Mars conjuncting with the Moon, the Pleiades, Orion out in full force and to top it all off the lunar halo. Quite an awesome sight, maybe even enough to impress my wife.

About a month ago I was driving my wife to work when I noticed Venus shining brightly in the east sky, burning through some light clouds, very impressive indeed, pointed this out to my wife, she said cool. That's what I'm talking about, may not know how to fix a car, or build an addition to a house, but I know where Venus is. We were stopped at a red light when I noticed out of the corner of my eye Venus starting to move, now don't get me wrong planets move, just not that fast and certainly not back into the direction from which they just came. Thinking to myself, please don't be a plane, please don't be a plane, please don't be a plane, crap it's a plane, then I'm thinking, please don't let her notice, please don't let her notice, please don't let her notice, then "Hey that's not Venus, it's a plane", credibility down the tubes, but now with this impressive sight, throw around words like Lunar halo, gotta impress. Get home, tell my wife about the Lunar halo, she says, "You're making this up", I say no, come out and take a look, thinking to myself, still be there, still be there, still be there, it was, she was impressed, everything is right again with the universe. Sorry about the grainy images, blogger wouldn't let me download anything more than 268k, I think one image is like 68k, the originals are fabulous, really.

A couple things to watch out for coming up in April are an occultation/conjunction of the Moon and the Pleiades April 8th., will be very cool as the Moon will be in a crescent phase and showing off it's earthshine, good viewing and photo op. On April 21st. the Lyrid meteor shower takes place, expect around 15 an hour, the Moon will be almost full which will take away some of the shower's bite, but hey, still a meteor shower none the less, and worth a view. Tonight you can see the Moon and Saturn conjuncting , Saturn will be just above the Moon. I will continue to update you on these and other events happening in the night sky on future posts.

Leave you now with my latest Sunset animation, taken a couple nights ago.

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.