Occultation of Mars. 12/7/2022

    A rare alignment of the Moon and Mars took place on Wednesday evening. Observation of the event was threatened by 99.99999% cloud cover. I took my Celestron C-8 out on the driveway about 20 minutes before the Moon was to cover the Red Planet, even though a glow in the clouds was the only indication that the Moon was above the horizon. Eventually a thin patch in the overcast reached the Moon's position and allowed me to quickly align the telescope and finder scope. At this point I attached my camera to the scope and waited for a clear spot to pass over the two targets. At 10:10, two minutes before the beginning of the occultation my patience and preparation was rewarded with a two second window of clarity. I held the shutter release down and fired off 30 photos until the clouds once again obscured my view. I never did get a visual sighting of Mars but it did show up in the photos.

   Photos were not perfect but I was happy with the results considering I didn't even have time to fine tune the focus. Instead I relied on the setting that I had on Sunday when I did a practice session. Below is a photo from Sunday

Lunar Eclipse 5/15-16/2022

  There is a school of thought when it comes to eclipses that 'it's solar or nothing', but a lunar eclipse has many advantages.  

  Most importantly, a lunar eclipse is visible everywhere that is the moon is above the horizon, as opposed to a solar eclipse's path of totality that typically has a width of around 100 miles or less. 

  Secondly the totality of a solar eclipse can last only 7.5 minutes for a particular location while a lunar eclipse can be up to 1 hour and 45 minutes in duration. 

  Last night's lunar eclipse lasted nearly an hour and a half which was fortunate for me since clouds blocked the whole moon for the first half hour of totality.  But patience paid off as the clouds parted somewhat and the rest of the show could be leisurely viewed through varying degrees of wispy clouds.
 

Morning Planets 4/25 and 4/28/2022

    A couple of weeks ago I received a cryptic text from my friend Kevin Welsh, that read

"Lots going on in the sky". Not sure what he was referring to, I sent him a photo of the Sun that I had taken that day with the caption "Lots going on on the Sun today"

   He responded by clarifying that he was referring to the morning planets lined up in the eastern predawn sky. The next clear morning on Monday the 25th. I hopped in the car and drove down the road to get a view of the eastern horizon.

  After receiving constructive criticism from my friend, Tim Bresnahan about the glow of the chemical plant in the foreground, I went out on Thursday the 28th to try again.

 

....and the answer is.

January Waterspout(s?) 1/10/2022

     Yesterday morning with the temperature of Lake Michigan in the low 40's and the air temperature steady at 9 F the steam rising off of the water created both clouds and at least one waterspout.  In the videos below some of the clouds appear to have some rotation.