Moon When Leaves Are Green

Well people the final count is in, I took over 1800 images on our vacation to the Kelowna/Winfield area, that's right I have enough images to post 5 a day for the next year. The trip was a huge success with the great hospitality of my daughter and boyfriend slash great cook and for putting up with us for a whole week, well maybe mostly me, I tend to ask a lot of questions like, " What day are we going to the observatory?"; "How far is it?" ;"When are we leaving?"; in the car on the way to the observatory, "So how far is it?" ;"Do you have a map?" "How much further?"; "Are we there yet?"....................................................................................,

"I'm hungry", okay the last one wasn't really a question and I don't think I actually said that, .. oh wait, yeah I did, never mind.

The first thing you notice when flying into Saskatoon is the total flatness, which can be good if you are taking pictures of Moonrises as the above May Full Moon, or "Moon When Leaves Turn Green Moon" , the name given it by the Dakotah Sioux. May's Full Moon is also known as the Flower Moon, because that's when flowers start to bloom in places other than Saskatoon, it is the smallest Full Moon of 2008 since the Moon is at apogee (furthest from the Earth) at 252,722 miles, it is approx. 12.3% smaller then the December 12, 2008 Full Moon which will be at perigee (closest to the Earth) at 221,473 miles.

Notice the beautiful red color of the Moon, again this is because the Moon being so low on the horizon it's moonlight has to travel through more of the Earth's atmosphere, particles in the atmosphere scatter the blues and allow the reds through to be enjoyed by us, the picture above illustrates this , the lower the Moon the deeper the red color.



This coming Sunday at 7:53pm edt the Phoenix Mars Lander will touch down on the Martian surface. The lander will hit the Martian atmosphere at around 13,000 mph, the use of parachutes and thrusters will slow it down to 5 mph in seven minutes to land on it's 3 legs, a very tricky and complicated procedure, less then 50% of powered landings are successful.

Notice on the above map the lander will be further north then any previous landers, hopefully will be able to gather ice water to perform various test to see whether or not it could have supported microbial life.

WARNING VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED, didn't know how to edit the first couple seconds of my sequel to my first Observatory video.

The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory

Radio Astronomy is the science of studying radio waves of objects in space, with Radio Astronomy we can see the universe in a whole new light so to speak, we can see things not possible with optical telescopes. At The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory they study anything that gives off radio waves, they mostly focus on the gases between stars, remains of exploding stars and our Sun.

The above image is the 26m Radio Telescope, the observatory also has a Synthesis Radio Telescope which is comprised of seven 9m dishes which when synced together produces a radio dish 600m in diameter, this principle instrument is used to image clouds of hydrogen gas emissions from high energy electrons and magnetic fields in space.


The poles and wires in the above image is also a radio telescope, this telescope is comprised of wire attached between poles, it's like a large short wave radio antenna, it's main function is to gather information about our own Milky Way galaxy. We arrived on site Thursday around noon and since there was no tours available I kinda just walked in some back door and was immediately stopped by some lady asking, get this, if I was a scientist, well I do look the part, had a tote bag around my shoulder, a honking big camera around my neck and gray hair, I was about to answer when a fellow scientist interrupted us, I then asked if I could take a look at their equipment, the other scientist said sure, directed me to their 26m control room, said he be by later, and I was off.


What was really cool about this whole adventure , I mean besides being called a scientist is the fact I was left all alone, got some too cool pictures from areas I don't think I was supposed to be in, due to the restricted area signs, I'd be walking around past their lunch room where my fellow scientists were, snapping pics, which by the way I WILL NOT post, otherwise I'd have to kill you and they me. I did take a couple of videos as well, one of the outside and one of just the control center, I will post the outside today, the control center in a later post.

On a final note, I just had to blog about my freelance photography moment. I was taking an image of the Moon in daylight when a couple of bikers drove by and asked if I was a freelance photographer, again looking the part with the gear, I said yes, because I was interested in what they wanted, actually I'm more free then lance, anyways they wanted their pic taken, gave me 20 bucks and I emailed it to them, didn't turn out very good, stupid filter I put on to protect the lens, so I emailed them some of my other freelance work, don't want bikers coming after me.

I'd like to thank livingsword again for suggesting this visit to the observatory. I'll leave you now with my first Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory video, and by the way my new title is, Bob, Freelance Amateur Astronomer Astrophotographer Scientist.....guy, business cards to follow.

Lunar Halo, Conjunction and Family Images

Having a great time here in Kelowna, been mostly cloudy so far but I was still able to do some astronomy, the image above was taken when we had a break in the clouds, what is quite remarkable about it is the sky only cleared for about half an hour, and that when it did clear there was a Lunar halo, a nice touch to my Saturn, Regulus Lunar conjunction. the two white dots just above and to the right of the top of the Moon are Saturn,the top dot, and Regulus the bottom dot.

Lunar, Saturn, Regulus Conjunction, May 12, 2008.


The above image is an image of the conjunction I took just before the sky cleared, the image below was the gathering of the heavenly bodies the night before, May 11, 2008.


Lunar, Saturn, Regulus Conjunction May 11, 2008.


Been taking lots of images with the camera of the mountains, family and various statues, yes people I am officially a tourist. Got my camera bag around my shoulder, my camera in my hand, ready to go. Never really used the camera for taking regular type images, makes sense though, usually have the camera on the tripod , put it in the car, get to point b, take celestial picture, head home. Below are some of my vacation images and an animated gif of my New favorite image, my Lunar Halo.

Cathy, Amanda, Dave



Cathy and Grandogs


Plane flying over Wood Lake


City Park

Ogopogo

Phoenix Mars Lander

The image above is the view from the restaurant we were at last night. The scenery in and around the Kelowna area is simply breathtaking. Notice the clouds, supposed to be like this for a few days, didn't stop us from driving around though to check out future spots for my dark sky horizon shots. I thought I'd found the perfect spot, a dark country road with tall trees on either side, my thinking, when the Milky Way is directly over head, take the pic, it would be a cool shot, the Milk Way framed by a set of evergreens, that's when the Bear word came up, yes people my new enemy is the Bear, not punk kids in cars, the Bear, stay tuned.

Two Weeks from today the Phoenix Mars Lander starts it's descent to the Martian surface, there are a lot of people watching, less then 50 percent of all previous lander missions have made it safely to the surface.

Phoenix will be the first mission to gather water ice from Mars' north polar region, it will then perform experiments on the sample with it's complex on board laboratory to see if it had ever been favorable to microbial life.

I will be out and around the Kelowna, Penticton area this coming week to take tons of images to post at a later date, hopefully the Bears won't be out to bother me too much, leave you now with a Kelowna scenery shot as an animated gif.

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.

Conjunctions, Meteor shower and Martian Landing

Got a cool image a couple days after the peak of the Lyrid shower when the Moon hadn't risen yet, above, while I was watching the meteor it looked odd, when I got home did the processing noticed the reason, either 2 meteors side by side or one broke up cool, and, and there is a start of an aurora, bottom left corner, the green part.

Heads up, Sunday April 27th. wee hours of the morning you can see the Moon just passing under Jupiter, that's right another conjunction, how early, well it is closest to Jupiter as it rises, around 3:00 am, but it is still conjunctinely (word?) close at 5:30 am just before Sunrise. I'll be out early to get a pic.

May is a crazy cool month for sky watchers, people, starting right away May 1st, look to the west-northwest 45 minutes after Sunset to see another stunning Pleiades gathering, this time with Mercury. I had mentioned before about the Eta Aquarids occuring May 6th, my bad, they are actually May 5th. 4:00 am just before the Sun rises, look to the east southeast around 15 degrees above the horizon, you have a new moon, so the contrast will be better, giving you brighter meteors and the amount of meteors varies on a 12 year cycle, which will peak between 2008-2010, so they are expecting, even though it's low on the horizon around 30 an hour.

Mark your calendars, May 6th., again 45 minutes after Sunset for a beautiful gathering of a crescent Moon complete with earthshine, Mercury, the Pleiades and Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus the Bull with the Hyades star cluster, excellent photo op. Look to the east southeast 45 minutes after Sunset.

You may have noticed I added a countdown clock for the Martian landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander. The lander touches down on the Martian landscape May 25th. The lander will use parachutes and thruster rockets to slow it down from 12,000 MPH to just 5.4 MPH to hopefully have a soft touchdown. NASA has not had a successful power landing since the 70's, lets keep our fingers crossed.

The lander has been given a tentative landing spot called "the Green Valley" a spot they are hoping will have plenty of ice within digging range of it's digging robotic arm so it can gather samples to analyse whether it had ever been able to support microbial life.

I'll leave you now with a cool Lunar Halo animated gif taken about a month ago.

The Lyrid Meteor Shower

Just a few hours before I took the above pic it was snowing so much that you couldn't see a few feet in front of you, but the Clear Sky Clock for my area said clear skies between 1:00 and 4:00 am, it has never let me down before so I got everything ready, camera, tripod, winter coat, gloves, toque just in case there was a break in the weather.

Got a little sleep woke up around 1:00 am thinking no way it's going to be clear and I can get back to some nice cozy sleep in my warm bed, there will be other showers, May 5th to be exact, the Eta Aquarids which I will talk about later. Anyways go through the motions, go to the window and, oh crap....I mean...oh goodie, clear skies, the little voice in my head was saying, "go back to bed, this isn't the shower you're looking for", but I thought no way, I'm not listening to that stupid voice, I'm going out, not going to let the voice be the boss of me.

Once out and set up it was great, it was quite, lots of fresh air and the Cosmos laid out before me. Now the thing with the Lyrids, they tend to be fast and short, reason being they hit the Earth's atmosphere head on and burn out quickly, I managed to capture a long one, right through Hercules keystone, the above image and in the image below I captured a couple meteors in the same pic last Thursday night, (since the shower runs from April 16-25), very cool.

I don't know if you were able to get out and catch the shower, if you didn't, not to worry, mark your calenders, the next meteor shower is just around the corner, May 5th.


The Eta Aquarids, and it's a moonless night, so they will be nice and bright, the best kind, there is a slight problem though, this shower's radiant, the constellation Aquarius only rises about an hour before morning twilight begins, around 4 am, but it should be a good show up to 30 an hour.


The Aquarids shower is the result of flakes of dust and debris left behind by Halley's comet burning up in the Earth's atmosphere which by the way last visited us back in 1986. I will definitely be out, should be warmer and no full Moon, I'm there. Look to the East-South East just above the horizon 4:00 am May 5th.



I'll leave you with yet another Moon with earthshine animated gif taken during it's last crescent phase.