Shallow Thoughts : : science
Akkana's Musings on Open Source Computing and Technology, Science, and Nature.
Sat, 13 Apr 2024
I'm sorry, but I have no eclipse photos to share. I messed that up.
But I did get to see totality.
For the April 8, 2024 eclipse, Dave and I committed early to Texas.
Seemed like that was where the best long-range forecasts were.
In the last week before the eclipse, the forecasts were no longer
looking so good. But I've heard so many stories of people driving around
trying to chase holes in the clouds, only to be skunked,
while people who stayed put got a better view.
We decided to stick with our plan, which was to stay in San Angelo
(some 190 miles off the centerline) the night before,
get up fairly early and drive to somewhere near the centerline.
Read more ...
Tags: eclipse, astronomy, photography
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12:36 Apr 13, 2024
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Sat, 14 Oct 2023
The path for the Oct 14, 2023 annular eclipse passed right over my house.
What luck!
We'd driven a few hours to see the
last annular eclipse,
in 2012, from Red Bluff, CA.
The opportunity to see one from home, without needing to drive anywhere,
was not to be missed.
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Tags: eclipse, astronomy
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19:22 Oct 14, 2023
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Sat, 28 May 2022
There's some talk that a usually obscure meteor shower, the Tau Herculids,
may this year become a meteor storm.
For details, see EarthSky News:
Will the Tau Herculid meteors produce a storm?
The Tau Herculids come from periodic Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, which
in 1995, began to break up, creating lots of debris scattered across
its orbit. It's hard to know exactly where the fragments ended up ...
but comet experts like Don Machholz think there's a good chance
that we'll be passing through an unusually dense clump of particles
when we cross 73P's orbit this year.
I'm not a big meteor watcher — I find most meteor showers
distinctly underwhelming. But in November 2002, I was lucky enough to
view the Leonid meteor storm from
Fremont Peak, near San Juan Bautista, CA.
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Tags: science, astronomy, meteors
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17:42 May 28, 2022
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Mon, 07 Mar 2022
A couple of years ago, Dave and I acquired an H-alpha solar scope.
Neither of us had been much of a solar observer.
We'd only had white-light filters: filters you put over the
front of a regular telescope to block out most of the sun's light
so you can see sunspots.
H-alpha filters are a whole different beast:
you can see prominences, those huge arcs of fire that reach out into
space for tens of thousands of miles, many times the size of the Earth.
And you can also see all sorts of interesting flares and granulation
on the surface of the sun, something only barely hinted at in
white-light images.
Read more ...
Tags: science, astronomy
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12:00 Mar 07, 2022
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Sun, 06 Jun 2021
I have another PEEC Planetarium talk coming up in a few weeks,
a talk on the
summer solstice
co-presenting with Chick Keller on Fri, Jun 18 at 7pm MDT.
I'm letting Chick do most of the talking about archaeoastronomy
since he knows a lot more about it than I do, while I'll be talking
about the celestial dynamics -- what is a solstice, what is the sun
doing in our sky and why would you care, and some weirdnesses relating
to sunrise and sunset times and the length of the day.
And of course I'll be talking about the analemma, because
just try to stop me talking about analemmas whenever the topic
of the sun's motion comes up.
But besides the analemma, I need a lot of graphics of the earth
showing the terminator, the dividing line between day and night.
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Tags: science, astronomy, programming, javascript, web
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18:33 Jun 06, 2021
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Wed, 07 Oct 2020
I've been working on my upcoming PEEC talk,
Observing
Mars at Opposition on October 16.
Mars' closest approach was yesterday, October 6, and the actual
opposition will be next Tuesday, October 13.
So, wait, we've already missed closest approach, and the opposition
will be over before the actual talk happens? Then why bother?
Fortunately, opposition is actually an "opposition season", not a
single date. And for most people, the best part is a little past
opposition.
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Tags: astronomy, programming, javascript
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18:10 Oct 07, 2020
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Sat, 25 Jul 2020
Monday was the last night it's been clear enough to see Comet Neowise.
I shot some photos with the Rebel, but I haven't quite figured out
the alignment and stacking needed for decent astrophotos, so I don't
have much to show. I can't even see the ion tail.
The interesting thing about Monday besides just getting to see
the comet was the never-ending train of satellites.
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Tags: astronomy, science, photography
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20:27 Jul 25, 2020
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Thu, 16 Jul 2020
Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE continues to improve, and as of Tuesday night
it has moved into the evening sky (while also still being visible in
the morning for a few more days).
I caught it Tuesday night at 9:30 pm. The sky was still a bit bright,
and although the comet was easy in binoculars, it was a struggle to see
it with the unaided eye. However, over the next fifteen minutes the sky
darkened, and it looked pretty good by 9:50, considering the partly
cloudy sky. I didn't attempt a photograph; this photo is from Sunday morning,
in twilight and with a bright moon.
Read more ...
Tags: science, astronomy, comet, programming, python
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12:58 Jul 16, 2020
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