Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
I used the normal lens this morning to capture these three objects in one field of view. I also had to crank the camera back and tip it almost completely vertical, as Jupiter was almost directly overhead.
Fairly clear skies, so I didn’t stick around for sunrise.
I put an appointment on my calendar earlier this week with an alert to remind me to go chasing planets after sunset on Tuesday evening. I make sure to check Astronomy and Sky & Telescope magazines’ websites for their ‘The Sky This Week’ observing articles and place the interesting (and observable from my location) items on my calendar. Here’s the paragraph for Tuesday evening from Astronomy’s web site:
Tuesday, August 21 – Our trio of bright evening objects — Saturn, Mars, and Spica — forms a pretty equilateral triangle (5° on a side) in the southwestern sky after sunset. But the highlight of the scene tonight is a gorgeous crescent Moon that hangs just 4° below Mars. Binoculars provide the best view of this celestial gathering. Look closely and you’ll notice the objects’ different colors. The Moon’s color depends largely on conditions in Earth’s atmosphere and could be anywhere from white (under a dry, haze-free sky) to yellow or even slightly orange. Sunlight reflecting off Saturn’s clouds has a golden glow while Mars’ ruddy deserts cast an orange hue. Blue-white Spica generates its own light from a scorching surface nearly four times hotter than the Sun’s.
∞ ∞ ∞
Terry and Sean had retreated to the band room for rehearsal and I sat slogging my way through the 49th Parallel, a British WWII film released in the United States under the title The Invaders. I recorded it a couple of weeks ago off the TCM channel. It drags and I still haven’t finished it. So when my phone buzzed with the text message alert, I jumped, literally, at the chance to stop watching the film and start looking up at the sky.
I took my camera gear and got in the van. I couldn’t take the Bonneville because Sean’s car happened to be parked in front of the garage. I didn’t mind taking the van; it’s what I drive every weekday anyway. I left the house at 8:20, about fifteen minutes after sunset, so the western sky still shown with twilight. I could clearly see the bright waxing crescent moon, but could not yet see Saturn, Mars or Spica. I drove west and southwest from Lansing, trying to find a spot clear of trees on top of a hill to setup the camera.
I ended up driving almost an hour all over the middle of Leavenworth County and even through the small unincorporated town of Jarblo. I never did find a satisfactory location. I finally stopped in the parking lot of the High Prairie Church at the corner of 187th street and the end of Eisenhower Road. The church had blazing bright lights illuminating their building, but I parked far away at the north end of the parking lot and used the van as a shield. I took several photos with various settings for about ten to fifteen minutes. I took a few minutes to just look around at the night sky from this location, liking the clear 360 degree visibility (lack of trees and less light pollution, if you didn’t look towards the church building). I could clearly see the constellations Scorpius, Sagittarius, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, but still only about half the stars in Ursa Minor. I could not yet see Pegasus as it still needed another hour or two to rise out of the east.
I packed up the camera gear and headed home, using Eisenhower Road to get back to Lansing. I parked the van, noting that Sean’s car still sat in the driveway. I returned to the living room, unpaused the 49th Parallel and again attempted to finish the film. Within five minutes, Terry and Sean came upstairs and Sean said his goodbyes. I asked Terry if he had even noticed that I’d been gone for an hour. He had that ‘deer in the headlights’ look that answered my question well enough.
I stopped my feeble attempt to finish the movie and instead switched to the season premiere of Top Gear, an episode featuring a battle between the three big American auto makers to produce a successor to the reigning but retiring police vehicle of choice: the Ford Crown Victoria. The Stig, driving a minivan, managed to evade all three Crown Vics, shaming the hosts (and the cars they were driving). That initial segment ended in a free-for-all demolition derby of the retiring behemoths. I made sure to Tweet the abuse to a friend who still owns (and loves) his Crown Victoria.
By the time we finished watching Top Gear, I realized I was up way past my bedtime. I retreated upstairs and crashed.
∞ ∞ ∞
I hit the snooze button a couple of times this morning, not happy at all with the shortened sleep. I made a strong pot of Irish Blend tea to take with me during the morning commute so I wouldn’t nod off and disrupt my riders with an accident or off-road excursion. I did remember to grab my camera’s memory card so I could download and review the photos I’d taken the previous evening.
I re-read the paragraph on the Astronomy.com web page and decided to test the equilateral triangle theory on my photos of Mars-Saturn-Spica. I used a nice clear plastic ruler to measure, on my laptop screen, the distance in centimeters between the three corners of the triangle. The distance between Saturn and Spica and Saturn and Mars appeared to be identical. But the distance between Mars and Spica was greater by 1.5 to 2 centimeters. So, technically, my photo did not confirm the observation of an imaginary equilateral triangle. Perhaps earlier in the day (or even the previous day), Mars might have been in the exact position to be equidistant visually from Saturn and Spica, but not last night at a quarter past nine o’clock.
I still hope to net Neptune this weekend, but my chances are looking slim. The weather forecast for the next few days includes thunderstorms. Ironic, that, since my next night to volunteer at Powell Observatory is this coming Saturday. This would be my third night of the public season, and if overcast, would make it two out of three times cloudy.
I fell asleep amid visions of rainbows and towering gilded sunsets dancing in my head. I woke up to clear skies this morning. Clear enough that I drug the tripod out and stuck the camera on it for a few minutes during the five o’clock hour before the sun began bleaching the eastern horizon.
Jupiter still hugged close to Aldebaran, but the most surprising sight for me was Orion visible, appearing to be lying down on the eastern horizon. I could see most of the stars in that constellation, but the moon and Venus shone significantly brighter.
As the week wears on, the moon will pass by or through the two planets. I plan to take more early morning photos until the new moon. I am especially looking forward to the opportunity presented Sunday morning, when I may be able to capture Mercury in addition to the objects shown above.
I may be staying up all night Saturday to watch the Perseid meteor shower (if you follow that link to Sky & Telescope‘s web page, you’ll see a beautiful photograph taken by local phenom astronomer Fred Bruenjes, a fellow member of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City). The weather, in addition to being much cooler, may cooperate and keep the skies clear.
I should probably take a nap Saturday or go to bed early, and then get up after midnight and drive somewhere, probably northwest of my home, to a darker sky location. Then, I should be able to see more meteors streaking through the sky, than if I lounged around in my backyard, peering through the local light pollution and leafy tall trees. But I doubt I’ll be able to take a nap, because I am also expecting out-of-town visitors for the weekend.
No rest for the aspiring amateur astronomer.
Despite a withering 103 degree temperature during the seven o’clock hour yesterday evening, I drug out my telescope and camera gear to the backyard in anticipation of an early evening planetary and lunar line-up. Terry grilled some chicken while I setup the scope, attached it to the portable battery and got the Autostar configured with the current date and time (almost straight up 8:00 pm). With forty minutes to go until sunset, I could clearly see the waxing crescent moon (see photo above), but the telephoto on my camera just couldn’t get me close enough to my lunar observing goal for the evening.
As I continue pursuing the Astro Quest observing award, created in 1995 by the ASKC Education Committee, I wanted to focus on the lunar section this month. The first item visible after a new moon happened to be the crater Hercules. Over the weekend, I researched all the lunar objects listed on the Astro Quest observing challenge, seeking images of the items first. I then determined I needed to find a lunar atlas. I have one for stars and deep sky objects (my handy Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas), but not a lunar one. Thanks to Google, I found the open source software called Virtual Moon Atlas, downloaded and installed it. I like it. The software makes it very easy to find features on the face of the moon and shows the current moon phase for my date/time and location.
I knew where to find the Hercules crater. Using my red dot finder scope, I honed the telescope in on the upper quadrant of the lit portion of the waxing crescent moon. Remembering to flip the image of the moon left to right in my head, I found the Hercules, and Atlas, craters easily. I spent several minutes using various eyepieces and barlows to zoom in for a closer look. I forgot to take a small portable table out with me to the backyard, so I didn’t have anything handy to take notes of my observations. I must get in the habit of doing this, if I plan to pursue other more stringent observing awards sanctioned by the Astronomical League.
I opted to mount my DSLR on the back of my telescope. I took a half dozen photos, none of which, upon downloading, were focused very well (grrrr). I selected the best of the bunch, cropped, labelled and uploaded it:
By this time, Terry had finished grilling supper, so I retired to the cool, air conditioned dining room to consume honey garlic grilled chicken and grilled Italian garlic bread with rice and Asian-style vegetables. He thoughtfully brewed some sun tea earlier in the day so I enjoyed two or three glasses of iced tea as well, knowing that I planned to return outside to the heat for more observing.
After dinner, I returned to the backyard, where I could now see Saturn, Spica and Mars, as predicted by various astronomy alerts I’d received earlier in the day. I captured the southwestern horizon at 9:30 pm in Lansing, Kansas from Astronomy magazine‘s StarDome Plus Java applet to share here. I could see another star, besides Spica, above Mars, but I’m not exactly sure which one in the constellation Virgo it might have been.
Before shutting down the telescope and returning the camera to it’s tripod, and a normal lens with a wider field of view, I turned the ETX90 towards Saturn for a quick look. I did take one photo of the ringed gas giant, which turned out better than I thought it would:
I also tried again to see the polar ice cap on Mars, but the ETX90 just couldn’t provide enough light or magnification (through the eyepieces and barlows I own) to get much bigger than the head of a pin. I could clearly tell I was not looking at a star and that the color reflected back to my eye was a ruddy orangy pink, but I could not discern any other features of the Red Planet.
The moon shone just a tad too bright to easily capture the fainter Saturn and Mars in a single photograph. Of the dozen or so shots I took with various aperture settings, shutter and film speeds, I only found one that appeared adequate:
By ten o’clock, I had all the equipment back in the air conditioned house. I had voluntarily sweated outside during triple digit heat for nearly three hours to make a few astronomical observations. I spent a few blessedly cool moments sitting in front of the fan before downloading, reviewing, editing and uploading the photos I’d taken. Soon after, I fell into bed (near eleven o’clock and two hours past my bedtime), but tossed and turned all night long. When the alarm sounded at five o’clock, I slapped snooze three times until it forced me awake at half past the hour.
Another day, a Tuesday this time, and another triple digit heat index predicted for the Heart of America. Autumn can not arrive too soon.
Cool, because at 72 degrees, that was as cool as it was going to get on Friday, but also because I could clearly see bright Venus (lower left of triangle), slighter dimmer Jupiter (top of triangle) and even dimmer Aldebaran (middle right of triangle). I like the cloud arrangement this morning a bit more than yesterday, but either one provides refreshing relief from the heat. Here’s a close-up of the trio:
I heard on the radio this morning our forecasted high was set for 105 degrees (our third or fourth day of excessive heat) with an extension of our heat advisory until next Wednesday. Ugh. My daughter in Texas is enjoying cooler weather than I am in Kansas. That just seems wrong.
I didn’t plan to get my camera out for the third morning in a row this week. There was no chance of seeing any moon, since only six hours had passed since the old moon became the new moon.
But when I went outside to take out the trash, I looked east and saw some nice pastels caressing the thin wispy clouds. I could still easily see Venus and Jupiter and barely discern Aldebaran, at least for the first few minutes.
Then the bolder colors began to shine forth.
At one point, I could see Venus shining brightly through a pink cloud. The photograph I took did not do justice to what I actually saw with my naked eye, but if you look closely, you can probably spy Venus behind the cloud.
And not much of it even purple.
I could easily see Venus, Jupiter and Aldebaran throughout the twenty minutes I vanely searched for the rising moon.
But I finally gave up looking for the last vestige of the waning moon with ten minutes left before sunrise.
And just before I took the camera off the tripod, I turned it north to capture some pink and purple tinged clouds.
But alas, I spied no moon amid the sea of haze washing up along the eastern horizon. Not surprising since the Kansas City area is under a heat advisory until Saturday evening (four days from now).
When I checked the star chart for the eastern horizon at moonrise later, I realized the moon wouldn’t even reach the five degree mark above the horizon before the sun rose. From the photos I took yesterday morning, I could discern the haze exceeded that height easily, which made an even thinner, dimmer crescent moon that much more difficult to find. I may have set myself an impossible task considering the amount of humidity in the atmosphere during the summer months in Kansas.
Perhaps I’ll have better luck next month capturing the elusive barest glimmer of the waning crescent moon.
I tossed and turned most of last night, dreaming about missing the opportunity to observe nearly the last shred of the dying crescent moon. I remember waking up at two o’clock, three o’clock and again at four o’clock, and struggling to return to sleep. Getting up that early would not have helped me observe the moon, since it wouldn’t rise above the horizon until 4:46 a.m. Central.
My cell phone buzzed me with my alert at ten minutes to five o’clock. I’d been staring up at the dark ceiling of my bedroom waiting for it to officially wake me up. I grumbled my way down the stairs, with Apollo in tow, and greeted my husband and our new Rottweiler, Lexy. I only took a moment to slip on my flip-flops, grab the camera gear, my purse and the van key. I drove a block and a half up the hill to the dead end in front of City Hall and just like I did two days ago, setup my tripod in the middle of the street.
I could clearly see the sliver of the waning crescent moon, just a few degrees (less than five degrees actually) above the eastern horizon. The sky appeared to be only minimally hazed. I began taking photos at 5:04 a.m. and tried various automatic settings and then revert to manually manipulating the shutter, aperture and finally the ISO, setting it to 800 (something I don’t like doing because it sacrifices pixels and detail for more light). Here is the unaltered series of photos I took, stopping at 5:13 a.m. this morning (click the image to view rest of album):
I may try again tomorrow morning, but I fear the twilight will wash out any chance of seeing the extremely thin crescent of a moon less than eighteen hours away from being reborn as a new moon. Moon rise tomorrow morning occurs at 5:43 a.m. Central, but twilight begins at 4:15 a.m. Sun rise will occur at 6:08 a.m. so I would have less than a half hour to spy an even thinner crescent moon amid the growing glare of the rising sun.
I also plan to attempt to capture the first sliver of the new moon on Thursday evening, but I don’t think I will be successful. The sun sets at 8:42 p.m. and the moon sets at 8:50 p.m., just eight minutes later. The new moon occurs near midnight (about a half hour before straight up midnight) during night the 18th (tomorrow).
I need my head examined. Why else would I suddenly sit up in bed and immediately head to a window in the darkest hour of the night, just to see if an astronomical conjunction was visible yet? And that’s exactly what I did this morning, without the aid of an alarm clock. Some internal portion of my brain must be tapped into some universal system (let’s hope it’s not that Dark Energy that’s making the cosmological headlines lately), because I woke up at 3:55 a.m. earlier today, just so I could photograph two planets, a star and a crescent moon.
A quick peak out my second story east facing window showed something bright glittering through my large oak tree’s leaves. For a better look, I went out the front door and walked halfway down the driveway. Yep, I could clearly see the crescent moon, Jupiter above, and Venus below, as well as the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus (although that was the only star I could see in that constellation with my blurry bleary sleepy eyes).
I went back inside and grabbed my camera gear and the keys to the van. I remembered my purse, since I planned to setup the tripod in the cul-de-sac in front of Lansing City Hall and the Police Department. I’ve been questioned more than once by the local ‘protect and serve’ brigade while attempting astrophotography on their front lawn.
I took a couple of shots with the normal lens, but quickly determined I really needed the telephoto. Once I switched the lenses, I could zoom in and capture just the four primary objects in one frame. I took a half dozen photos before returning the gear to the van. At least one police car did cruise by, but he probably didn’t see me ensconced in the dark dead end to his right as he turned left down the hill.
Once I got back home, I went back to bed. Five hours later, I woke up and thought to look at the photos I’d taken while half asleep. I settled on the second to last one I took. Here is that photo (twice … once without labels and once with):
I let Apollo out this morning and looked up (like I always do) and realized the sky was unusually clear, free of haze or clouds. I vaguely remembered reading an astronomy alert on Monday about Jupiter or Venus being less than ten degrees from a bright star (which one I couldn’t remember off the top fo my head). So, I left Apollo in the back yard and traversed the house to the front door on the east side. I stepped outside and had to walk down the steps to get out from under my large black oak tree, which blocks all of the eastern horizon when you look out the front door or windows of my house. Up and to the southeast I easily found the waning moon (see photo above). Turning back to the east, I found a very bright Venus and a somewhat less bright (but not by much) Jupiter directly above it. And just to the lower right of Venus, I could barely see a star twinkling.
I went back in the house and grabbed my camera. The tripod stayed locked in the trunk of the car. I just hoped I could keep steady enough to capture the ‘morning stars’ from the driveway. I took half a dozen shots of Jupiter and Venus and three or four of the waning moon. Then I went inside to review the results.
All but the last photo of Jupiter and Venus were blurry from not using a tripod. Only one photo of the moon, done with some manual fiddling with the shutter and aperture proved to be passably viewable.
I hopped on the Astronomy.com website to access their Star Dome Plus subscriber only star atlas Java application. I needed to determine the name of the star faintly sparkling next to bright Venus. I set the app to look at 45 degrees of the eastern horizon at the time I took the photo (5:35 a.m. Central) and discovered Aldebaran of the constellation Taurus to be the star near our sister planet. Here’s a screenshot of the eastern horizon courtesy of Star Dome Plus:
I quickly edited my one good photo of the ‘morning stars’, rotating the orentation from landscape to portrait and adding some text labels to identify the objects observed. Here are both the unlabelled and labelled versions of that photo:
I did remember to let Apollo back in from his morning soujourn through the backyard. He turned his nose up at his breakfast and climbed up on the couch for his morning nap.