A couple clear nights in Renton.

Yes, I'll admit once again I've been slacking on new blog content here. Do I really have loyal readers of this that get a *Ding!* new entry to the Astro-Blog? I guess I should hope so. I have unintentionally come into some more free time lately when the loss of yet another job about a month ago, so I'm wandering around looking for a job on the internet, and getting things done around the house these days. The job hunting has been pretty bleak once again. Anyway, I've had time to get some more work done on the sticky observatory dome, cussed at Windows some more (that's pretty normal), and have done a little imaging this last week in our warm weather.
First image is what the observatory looks like on a nice, stable, clear night.  Sure, there is a bit of light pollution to the west from the city of Renton, but at least it's not bouncing off the bottom of clouds for a rare change in scenery.
Next, we have a shot of the NGC4565 Galaxy.  It's a nice example of an edge-on galaxy.  It's easy to see the center of the galaxy and the dust lanes through it as we see it from the edge.  The galaxy is 50 million light years away, so I feel honored that those wee little ancient photons made that long trip just to be sucked into my camera and preserved forever.  Just like a spider captured in a jar?
The techie details for those who care:

• Scope: Meade LX200 Classic at f/6.3
• Camera: Canon 350D (modified).  ISO800
• Images: 21 exposures at 5 minutes each stacked and tweaked with Images Plus

Next is the familiar M51 Whirlpool Galaxy.  If you follow this blog and your computer goes *ding!* you probably know that I have taken many images of this one.  It's probably still my favorite and it's nicely located almost straight up this time of year.   I'm still working on getting the ultimate shot of this thing, and never quite satisfied.
Again the techie info:

• Scope: Meade LX200 Classic at f/6.3
• Camera: Canon 350D (IR modified).  ISO800
• Images: 12 exposures at 5 minutes each stacked with Images Plus

As always, click the small images to see these in full size. 

That's it for now, more later hopefully!

ISS images of Earth.

we can never have too many of these kind of videos can we? A nice 16 minute video of Don Pettit's photography from his time on the ISS. Go full screen with HD resolution if you have the bandwidth!

Asteroid solution - last desperate attempt.

Just a funny that I came across this evening!

Space rocks thrown at Earth.

The recent space rock sizes. The one that hit Russia, and the other bigger one (asteroid 2012 DA14)  that fortunately passed us.  Either way, if the little one didn't blow up high in the atmosphere and hit Chelyabinsk directly it would have been a major disaster - more than just broken windows and confused Russians with their car cameras.  If the big one smacked us.....well, you just guess!

Deep Sea Treasures

First there was the discovery of the lost Titanic, then Gus Grissom's lost Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft, now Amazon rich guy Jeff Bezos has found one of the ultimate in lost treasures. A couple of F-1 engines from Apollo 11's S-IC first stage! It may or may not be from Apollo 11 since it seems they still need to confirm serial numbers, but it's definitely from a Saturn V. But wait....it gets even better! Jeff, being a local Seattle guy and the owner of one of the upcoming private sector spacecraft companies (Blue Origin), is hoping to have one of the two engines on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.  Woo hoo!
Blue Origin already has their Charon test vehicle on display there, a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle with a bunch of jet engines.

| CollectSpace article |

 | Bezos Expeditions |

Spring!

Happy first day of spring!  Although here in Seattle, it starts out stormy with 40+ kt gust winds, lowered freezing level, heavy rain, and no view of Comet PanSTARRS.  Typical spring for the last 4 years now.  Global warming?  Nah...I call it more like "global climate shift".  
How many times have I had the Astro-Shack dome open since I built it last summer?  Uh....3 times maybe?

Anyway, here is a nifty video showing the seasons of Earth from above.  Spring/fall is when the terminator is straight up and down.

Comet PANSTARRS

Now the frustration for Seattle astronomers can get started.  Early in March Comet PANSTARRS will be visible in the western skies after sunset.  When was the last time we saw a good sunset?  I think I remember one about 3 weeks ago.
The comet was giving some great views in the Southern skies - it is summer in Australia right now, and they have had their fair share of good comets over the years, so it's our turn now for us northern dwellers!
Keep looking west over the next weeks and if it's clear we may get lucky and see something.

| PanSTARRS info from Astronomy Magazine |

Global warming = less clear nights?

Last week I received an email from Allison who was working on an infographic on the problem of global warming.  I looked it over and it looks pretty good, so I'm sharing it on my blog at her request.

(Click to see infographic)

I often get emails to our club site from people asking "when is your next star party?" I never have a really good answer for them other than nicely saying something like "we don't even try anymore since we'll end up with more cancelled events rather than viewings."  If scheduling a public viewing would cause skies to clear, we would do it a couple times a month!  But again, even during the summers over the last several years, we hardly get reliable weather to do this.  A couple summers ago, I worked for about a month to do a star party for a school group in Maple Valley - in early summer even - and after 4 tries had to give up due to weather.

I think I like to call this a "global climate shift" which I think describes the problem clearer than "global warming".  With all the harsh winters on the East coast over the last years (this winter is another bad one), and here in Seattle the last few years our summers haven't really started on the usual July 5th date when summer usually starts (no, I'm not joking about July 5th either - ask any native here!). I've also noticed with great disgust and frustration that the number of clear skies at night has decreased noticeably over the last 4 years or so.  Just a few years ago, we would have many clear winter nights (very cold of course, but very clear and stable atmosphere) with many chances to observe the winter skies visually or through astrophotography.  This winter is no exception, I've had our observatory open twice over the last 3 months - and even then conditions were not ideal, but it's all I've had.  Could it simply be the "new toy curse" that seems to plaque astronomers whenever they buy a nice piece of gear to try out?


Anyway, read the infographic link below to see the full size view and see if you agree also.  I think I would add a line to that says "less clear nights for Northwest Astronomers" to that graphic!

| Full size infographic |

| More on the LearnStuff.com site | 

More from Russia...

Another good one I came across. This looks like a space shuttle launch - but in reverse with the big smoke cloud behind it. Why don't we ever get lucky to see something like this in Seattle? Maybe it does happen, but it's cloudy!
Kind of interesting the similarities of this scene with the one in the Deep Impact movie from a few years back.

Fact:


Fiction (Scene from Deep Impact - some similarities!)

Other side of the Russian Meteor

I came across another good video compilation of the Russian attack from space.  This time we see the impact of the shockwave as it hits as well as the windows breaking.
I wonder if the woman at 2:15 got the job she was interviewing for?  Ha!

Russian Meteor

So unless you have been in a cave the last few days, you have probably heard of the asteroid that passed close to Earth last week. That was fun, but what was even more impressive was the totally unrelated chunk of rock that hit over Russia the same day. Kind of like "Tunguska II" if it was a movie. But this one was probably smaller even though it was reported to have the power of the atomic bomb, it blew up at a high altitude and only broke a lot of windows and cut up a about 1,000 people from glass. Here is a good collection of videos of the event from a guy in Russia that collected them an posted them on a web page. I'll admit that I was quite unproductive this morning at work since I had to look at all these!


Infographic on the event. I just noticed one error, the "GPS orbit" should read "Geosynchronous orbit" (this is the orbit that the TV satellites live) - where "Honey Boo Boo" is beamed to Earth from.
| Russian meteor videos |

A cute (but accurate!) animation about Jerry Carr's flight