Geminid Meteor Shower Dec 13-14 2021

 

  Conditions were not optimal for the annual Geminid Meteor Shower but light winds and temperatures in the mid 30's were nothing to complain about.  The biggest hindrance to ideal conditions was the waxing gibbous moon that washed out the dark background sky most of the night and made the dimmer meteors difficult to impossible to see.  Making the best of the situation I let the abundant moonlight illuminate the foreground as I locked the cable release on the camera hoping that some of the 6 second exposures would catch a few of the brighter meteors.  The evening session lasted from 7:45-9:15 pm and I counted 12 meteors.

Lake freighter Joseph L Block on the horizon.

    Moonset occurred at 3:45am and it made a big difference as I was able to see 81 meteors from 3:15 to 5:15 am.

Moonset

     

Geminid at the border of Orion and Taurus

Geminid between Canis Major and Orion

Partial Lunar Eclipse 11/19/2021

   The longest partial lunar eclipse in over 600 years took place early on this cloudy windy morning.

   I woke up around 3 AM and could see that there might be some breaks in the heavy overcast.  The photo below taken when I stepped out on my deck almost an hour before the peak of the eclipse, shows the moon more than halfway covered by the Earth's shadow.

    There was a brisk wind gusting up to 30 mph on the deck side of the house so I grabbed a tripod and went around to the front of the house to get some shelter from the breezes.

   The wide-angle shots below show the near-totally eclipsed moon among the star field in the constellation Taurus. I was hoping some of the red in the moon would show up in the photos but the color got washed out because of the long-exposure needed for the stars to appear.  

   Of course I can't step out of my house alone at 3:30 in the morning, as my dog Nico followed me out.  I gained an appreciation of her night vision when she dropped a tennis ball at my feet. An impromptu game of  fetch commenced, illuminated only by the cloud-reflected lights from the power plant over a mile away.  The low lighting didn't prevent her from short-hopping grounders on the driveway. 

2021 Perseid Meteor Shower 8/14/2021

 

  This year's Perseid Meteor Shower was met with periods of perfectly clear skies and a new enough moon so that it was out of the picture by midnight.  The first photo is from Thursday night when the peak of the shower was predicted.  The rest are from Friday night which was slightly past peak but still provided a respectable showing.

 The next two photos were taken consecutively with camera's cable release locked, and they appear to show the same meteor, unless a fragment broke off of the main piece of space dirt. Never photographed that before.

  The last photo shows a jet and 6 satellites which superficially could be mistaken for meteors.

Venus and the Stars of Winter 3/1/2020

  Last night after a windy and overcast winter I took advantage of first clear moonless night of spring to get some parting shots of the winter stars as they sink lower in the west each evening.  In the photo above Sirius the Dog Star, is the bright one on the left, the constellation Orion is toward the middle to the upper left of the peak of my house and the orangish star to the upper right of the peak is Aldebaran the eye of Taurus the Bull. In a couple of weeks they will be lost in evening twilight not to been seen in a dark sky again until August or September when they'll rise before the morning dawn.

  You may have noticed the jet sneaking into the frame as a streak of light emerging from behind the house peak.  Jets weren't the only things interfering with my astrophotography attempts.  The photo below shows another jet and two satellites.

Jet on left, stable satellite in the middle and a tumbling satellite on the right

   The changing brightness from not visible to bright as Venus is indication the satellite that left the dashed line is tumbling out of control with a period of about 5 seconds. 

  In the photo above, the light paths were cropped  (and in the case of the tumbler, rotated for composition purposes) to show the differences in the light trails they leave.

    Venus was bright enough to cast a shadow and did a admirable job lighting up the lake during the 30 second photo below.

Aurora 9/1/2019

 

   Predictions of auroral activity had been all over the local news since mid-week.  Friends and relatives had been asking me if I had heard of the pending Northern Lights display.  My reply dampened their expectations since the Kp index was only forecast to hit 5 or 6.  Besides that the timing of peak activity was supposed to occur when our local area was under cloudy skies. 

  Anyway I woke at 4:30 this morning and looked out to see that the sky had cleared.  So I checked my favorite website http://spaceweather.com/ to see what the geomagnetic conditions were.  They indicated a level of Kp 5 which doesn't make for a visually detectable display from my location but my camera can sometimes catch it anyway. So I packed the camera and the dog and headed toward the state park.

Slightly green on the horizon at level Kp 5

    The strength of the northern lights can vary quickly and they did. Fortunately intensity to probably Kp 6 and the display became barely visible to my eye but easily within the range of my camera.

Exposure - 30 seconds at f/3.5 and ISO 8000

Telephone pole and sand silo cropped out.

Milky Way over Lake Michigan

Northern Lights 9/29/16

   

 The sky cleared overnight just as an increase in auroral activity was to set to begin.  I drove out toward Ludington State Park at 9:30 and attempted to see and photograph the expected modest  display.  I stayed out there about an hour but the Kp index which had been predicted to be near 6 had decreased to 4 which made the lights out of reach for my location.

    At 5 AM I woke and saw that the skies were still cloudless, so per routine I loaded up the car and headed back out.  This time even though the aurora was not detectable with my eyes my camera did a fine job of picking up the color in the faint glow to the north.  Incidentally the Kp value was 5.3.

  Tonight the Kp is again expected to be near 6 but cloud cover is forecast to increase by nightfall in my area.  I may attempt to drive north of the clouds to witness another display.  Stay tuned.......

Persied Meteor Shower 8/13/15

  Tried to photograph the Persied Meteor shower last night. Only caught three before the high clouds wiped out the contrast of the night sky. 

  Below is a timelapse video put together from the 1500 photos that I took. 

Mercury's Turn

   As the Pleiades star cluster rides off into the spring sunset it took the time to pose with the inner most planet Mercury.

Venus and the Pleiades 4/11/15

  Saturday night and for the next few nights, Venus (the brightest planet) is passing a couple of degrees from  the Pleiades star cluster.  I drove out to the Lake Michigan shore and took a few photos yesterday.   In a couple of photos a satellite was clearly visible.  I was able to ID it with Starry Night computer software.

  Below is a link to more info about the Flock 1B satellite

Satellite info

Close up of Venus and star cluster

Nova in Sagittarius 3/29/15

  A couple of weeks ago a nova was discovered in the constellation Sagittarius.  Yesterday I tried to look for it from my house but found that the trees in my neighborhood blocked my view of that part of the sky.  Too bad because yesterday the sky was much more transparent than today.  

   I woke before dawn this morning and saw that it was somewhat clear out, so I packed my camera and headed for a unobstructed southeast horizon,   

  Not the most impressive photos but it's only the second nova I've ever photographed.  For more information here is a link to Bob King's astronomy blog. astrobob - Nova in Sagittarius

Comet 2014 Q2 1/13/2015

  Comet Lovejoy 2014 Q2 made for a nice target on a 5 degree evening on Tuesday.  

  In the photo the tail is faintly visible to the left of the head of the comet.

Comet 2014 Q2 1/12/2015

In August 2014,Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy, discovered his fifth comet.  Initially it was expected to reach only magnitude 7 (2.5x dimmer than the naked eye can detect), but it has peaked at magnitude 4 and can be detected with the naked eye from a dark site. The exponential nature of the astronomical brightness scale, means that a 3 magnitude increase is 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 = 15 times brighter. Photos reveal the blue-green color of the comet.

Green blob left of the tree

  This photo shows  two galaxies the Andromeda Galaxy on the right at a distance of 2 million lightyears and the Triangulum Galaxy faintly visible on the left.

Big Starry Sky Country 9/2/2013

  Day 1 :  Saw 1 bird in North Dakota.

Lark Sparrow

  Then a herd of horses in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Sadly we passed by this group about 10 minutes later and the young brown horse on the left side of the photo was laying flat on the ground as the others stood over it.



  A pronghorn greeted us at our rental on day 1 in Montana.



    Big Sky Country became Big Starry Sky Country when the Sun went down.  This photo shows the center of our Milky Way Galaxy in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.  The dark parts are clouds of dust and gas veiling the galaxy's core.

The second photo show the view overhead of the Cygnus-Orion Arm of our spiral Galaxy. Our solar system lies on the outskirts of this arm.

  Next photo is of the far regions of the Cygnus-Orion Arm, away from the core of the galaxy,  with the Andromeda Galaxy on the right side of the photo.

  The Andromeda Galaxy is comparable in size to our Galaxy.