Conjunction Of Venus And Jupiter In Sagittarius

Venus, Jupiter conjunction January 31, 2008

Don't wanna seem like a braggy Bob, but I got a some real cool pics of the Venus , Jupiter conjunction. The weather co-operated apart from it being -30c, the camera still working at those temps, just amazing. Took an image the day before and the day of to show Jupiter's dance with Venus. If you missed the conjunction you can still see them close together and the Moon joining the gathering on Sunday February 3rd. early morning around 8am EST.

Venus, Jupiter conjunction February 1, 2008

Conjunctions are fun, everyone can enjoy them, just walk outside your house to view the gems in the sky, no equipment required. Some upcoming conjunctions are,

1. February 27, Venus and Mercury; dawn sky.

2. March 24, Venus and Mercury again; dawn sky.

3. September 11, Venus and Mars; dusk.

4. December 31, Jupiter and Mercury; dusk.

After a 2 month delay Shuttle Atlantis is set to launch Thursday February 7th. at 2:45 EST, that is as long as a bent hose for the Shuttle's radiator cooling system checks out okay. Shuttle Atlantis's main mission is to deliver and install the ESA's Columbus laboratory, if you can, check out NASA TV , they have cameras everywhere during the launch, very cool to watch.

Haven't had an animated GIF which seems like forerver, so I'll leave you with what I like to call "Moonset over water", I took this image a couple weeks ago with the Canon 40D.

Asteroids and Spy Satellites

People it's becoming one big shooting gallery up there, first we have the near miss of Mars with asteroid 20007 WD5 today, then we have the close approach of asteroid 2007 TU24 yesterday, the above image, then we have the Spy Satellite free falling out of the sky.

Okay, this intrigues me, being a Spy from way back when, I thought I better look into this one. To really understand what's going on here you have to think like a spy. We have stuff falling out of the sky regularly so why did we happen to hear about this one? Maybe the NSC wants the Russians and Chinese to know about this satellite so it would force their hand and use their antigravitational technologies, but the Russians and Chinese thinking like spys thinking that's what the Americans are trying to do and won't use their technology, but maybe the Americans don't really want the Russians and Chinese to get this satellite and think by saying how important it is, they think the Russians and Chinese will think they are just trying to force their hand and use the antigravitational technologies, and therefore they won't, so they win and the Russians and Chinese won't use their technologies to capture the satellite.

I know what your thinking, Bob's lost his mind for sure, but maybe I'm crazy like a fox, after all I am a spy from way back when, I know how these people think, maybe I have been working for the NSA all along and have been passing code, eg. 20007 all along in my posts.

Okay enough spy talk, I was washing dishes 6am Sunday morning when I was looking out my back window and thought wait a minute, it got bright all of a sudden, did the Moon sneak through the cloud cover I thought to myself, grabbed my camera which I always keep beside me now , ran out the back door and saw a cool Moon through what looked like a portal in space grabbed a couple of pics and got the shot. I'm gonna leave you now with a little video I took of the wolf Moon, notice the cool wispy clouds and the Moon's movement caused by the Earth's rotation, notice also the atmosphere turbulence causing it to look like it's going in and out of focus.

Venus, Jupiter and The Moon Coming Soon,To A Cosmic Theater Near You

There you go people, the largest title in blogging land, probably breaking some kind of writing rules with it, don't care, Bob breaking writing rules Johnson is what they call me. Early Morning Friday February 1st. Venus and Jupiter get very close to each other, low in the SE sky. Then February 3rd. the Moon joins the grouping, should be a great photo op. I'll be out taking pics, weather permitting of course. I love these kind of events because everyone can enjoy them, don't need no scope or binocs, just yourself and the sky.

One site I really recommend for events like these or any other celestial events is Sky View Cafe, in fact the only thing I recommend more is buying real estate. I use Sky View all the time, it lets me know exactly what is happening in my local sky, exactly where the planets, stars, deepsky objects are at any particular time, past , present or future, if you get anything from this site, that would be my greatest gift to you.

I was honored this week with some awards. AngelBaby who has an interesting and cool blog about everything angels has awarded me with the Interesting Blog award, thanks AngelBaby!, I'd like to pass this award on to Anna who has very interesting photo blog which has helped me with some tech advice and settings on taking pics of the Moon and other night time objects. Swubird has a very interesting blog about science, technology and his life experiences in the military. Will has a very informative blog about healthy living for people and our planet Earth. And JD who has great site with awesome images and prose, very excellent blog. I will leave the other awards for future posts, don't want you to think it's all about me and how great I am, even though this blog is kinda all about me and my wacky cosmic adventures.

Got another cool sunset the other day, never really saw the Sun because of the clouds, but the effect it had on lighting up the surrounding landscape with its changing colors was awesome.

I took a bunch of images and stitched them all together, made a movie of it, you really notice the changing of lighting this way, hope you enjoy.

Moon When Snow Drifts Into Tipis

In my quest to image all the Full Moons, I have now captured January's Full Wolf Moon, called the wolf Moon because in January the wolves are howling because they are hungry and cold like I was when I took this pic, man I felt like howling, at -27c I was a cold puppy. The next door neighbor's pugs were outside while I was taking this image, howling too because they were cold and wanted to be let back in their warm house. The January full Moon has been given a cooler name by the Omaha tribe,"Moon When Snow Drifts Into Tipis. The next full Moon will be February's or "Moon When Geese Come Home" followed briefly by a Total Lunar Eclipse, February 20/21, if you miss it, the next one isn't till 2010.

Why image all the full Moons, aren't they all the same? No, no they aren't, because the Moon doesn't have a perfectly circular orbit, it is out of sync with it's rotation, slips up and shows us a little of it's behind, this is called Libration.

Harvest Moon

Notice on my January image compared to my September Harvest Moon image, more of the North East quadrant is showing

Went to get more images of a Sunset the other night and as I was waiting I looked to see what the Moon was doing, it was just coming up from behind some clouds, which was cool enough, but it was being lit up by the reds of the Sunset, turned my tripod around and snapped some images

I took about 25 images with my Canon 40D and stitched them all together to make a movie. I took about 50 images of the Sunset and made a movie of it to post at a later date, hope you like the Moonrise.

Fireball In The Sky!!

The University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon campus caught an awesome fireball Saturday January 5th. 9:05 pm. My hats off to the staff and students for having a camera on top of the chemistry building to capture such events, too cool for school!

A fireball is basically a large meteor, the fireball objects entering our atmosphere can range from a few inches to a few feet in size, entering our atmosphere at up to 70,000 mph they stop burning around 10-20 miles high and only 1-2% reach the ground to become a meteorite.

Messenger had it's closest approach to Mercury Monday January 14th, another spacecraft had an important happening on that date as well. Ulysses spacecraft was at it's highest point over our Sun's north pole. NASA and the ESA have joined together for the Ulysses mission, launched from the Discovery Shuttle October 1990 the Ulysses spacecraft used Jupiter for gravitational assist to orbit around the Sun's poles. Just as Earth's poles are crucial to studies of terrestrial climate change, the Sun's poles may be crucial to studies of the Solar cycle.

Photo credit Sky and Telescope

The Sun goes through an eleven year cycle from minimum solar activity, things like Sunspots and flares to maximum activity. We are at Solar minimum and January 3rd was declared the start of a brand new cycle, cycle 24 has just started with the arrival of sunspot, active region 10981. Active region 10981 has an opposite magnetic polarity compared to active region 10980 and is at a high solar latitude, both indications a new cycle is upon us. What this means for me is more sunspots and flares to take pics of.

Got my first picture of a Sunrise the other day and guess what, decided to make another animated gif, hope you like it.