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If you have clear skies this evening (Feb. 26th), look towards the west after the sun sets, when the sky is just starting to darken. You’ll see a beautiful formation of Jupiter, Venus and the crescent Moon. Here’s what it looked like from Yeosu just a short while ago. Definitely click on the photo a couple of times to get the large view. Not one of my better shots, but I hope you enjoy anyway.  Moon, Venus and Jupiter Being a sci-fi fan, I find the io9(We Come From the Future) blog to be particularly interesting. Recently, they posted a beautiful time-lapse video entitled “Temporal Distortion,” by Randy Halverson. According to Halverson, It is the result of 20-30 second exposures edited together over many hours to produce the timelapse. This allows you to see the Milky Way, Aurora and other phenomena, in ways you wouldn’t normally see them. You can click on the video below to watch it. Be sure to play it in full screen mode and turn up your sound. The music was written by Bear McCreary, who also wrote the stunning music for the Sci-Fi channel’s much-acclaimed remake of “Battlestar Galactica,” my favorite science fiction TV series. Watching this brought back fond memories of many nights spent looking through my telescopes under the amazingly dark skies of the eastern Montana prairie. Enjoy. Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo. Yes, I stayed up late last Saturday to try to take a few photos of the lunar eclipse. It was spectacular here, the moon high in a mostly clear sky and sporting a deep rust-red color, which made taking photos a bit difficult. I walked down to where I usually go running, the soccer field by the gym, which has a wide-open view of the sky. I use Canon Image Stabilizer (IS) lenses on the camera. IS lenses are supposed to reduce blur when you’re hand-holding the camera in low-light and other situations, but I’d read that you shouldn’t use the IS function when using your camera on a tripod, because the lens will look for camera shake when there isn’t any. Using it with a tripod, then, will add some blur to your photos. Well, I thought that I’d turned off the IS, but when I got back to my apartment, I noticed that it was turned on. Sure enough, all the shots were a bit on the blurry side. Lesson learned–double check all settings, especially if you’re going to be out shooting in the dark. Anyway, here are a couple of shots. The first one is of the pre-eclipse moon, which I was able to shoot from my apartment, and the second is of the moon during totality, around 11:30 p.m. local time on Saturday. The only post-processing I did in Photoshop was to sharpen both images a bit. The color of the moon in the second one is as I shot it. Click on either image to get a larger view.
Another astronomical event is occurring tonight. The Geminid meteor shower will best be seen between 10 p.m. local time and sunrise tomorrow morning. This annual shower has been picking up steam in recent years, and, despite the presence of an almost-full moon, some of its fireballs, characteristic of the shower, could be seen. Give it a try. Me? I’m feeling a bit lazy, but I might try to watch it from my apartment, though I have a very limited view of the sky. More later. I woke up real early this morning, like, at 3:30, and looked out my window to see a beautiful, clear sky, the first time I’ve been able to see the morning stars in what seems like weeks. Some of the recent evenings have been mostly clear, but we’ve had mainly overcast morning skies for quite a while. This morning, there was a beautiful, waning crescent moon rising in the east, preceded by Capella, Aldebaran and the Pleiades. Now, I’m going to watch the opening game of a 4-game set between the Yanks and the Red Sox. Yeah, I re-subscribed to MLB-TV in order to watch the teams struggle through the dog days of August and head down the stretch in September. The Red Sox have been devastated by injuries all season and are 6 1/2 games behind the Yanks. Hopefully, the New York squad can win 3 of 4 or even sweep the series; that would pretty much leave the Sox dead in the water as far as getting a spot in the playoffs. Excuse me now while I go chug another liter of water. More later. It seems that the launch of the Korean rocket yesterday was successful, but the orbital insertion of the satellite failed. The first stage of the rocket was Russian-made and the 2nd was Korean. The Russians claim that the 2nd stage failed to do its job, causing the satellite failure. So, it’s probably a 50-50 success-failure situation for South Korea. Nice try, and I’m sure the country will attempt to put another one up in the near future.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, there’s a solar eclipse that will be seen in most parts of Asia, including South Korea. Here in Yeosu, we’ll experience about 90% totality, definitely not enough to look at the Sun with the naked eye. Here’s where the eclipse will be seen, courtesy of the Sky and Telescope website.
Yesterday, about 11:30 a.m., I went jogging for the first time in 5 weeks and did I ever feel it! Besides being a bit out of shape, I was also drenched in sweat after 30 minutes–the humidity and heat were almost too much. I don’t remember ever feeling the humidity in the Dominican Republic like I do here. I think one reason is that in the DR there was an almost constant ocean breeze. Here, despite being close to the sea, there are many mountains that serve to block the wind at times. Yesterday, there was no cooling breeze. Sure made it seem hotter than it was. More later. The Korean won is tanking again. It had strengthened to around 1300 to the dollar, but now it has dropped back to the 1500 level and doesn’t show any signs of stopping there. Very bad situation–again. We’ve had rainy weather lately, but the wind and cold have been holding off. I was hoping to get a glimpse of Comet Lulin through my binoculars this morning, but, unfortunately, it’s raining right now. I was also hoping to walk to Odongdo Island today (it’s connected to the mainland by a causeway), but I may have to put that off. My jogging has fallen off this week for one reason or another. For one, the gym where I run on the treadmill in cold weather was closed recently for a few days in order to accommodate freshman orientation. Yup, we have a new crop of kids coming in at the start of the Spring semester on March 2nd. Nicely enough, though, we’re off this week until next Monday. I might take the bus over to one of Korea’s largest cities, Gwangju, which is only a few hours away. I’ve finally–FINALLY–posted photos of Glacier National Park in Montana that I took last July when we had a small family reunion. You can view some of the most magnificent scenery anywhere by clicking here for the Glacier album or you can just browse around the Photo Gallery until you find the Montana section. I didn’t post any photos of my family. I’m not sure how shy they are about having their pictures pasted on the internet, so I won’t put any up unless I get an OK from them. Besides, I sent them the family portion of the photos back in July. As a teaser, here’s one of St. Mary Lake. Glacier Park is an area where it’s almost impossible to take a bad photo.
Ahhhhhh, then there’s the upcoming baseball season, which is right around the corner. Despite all the controversy surrounding A-Rod, I think the Yanks are still looking mighty fine to make the playoffs and the World Series this year. I’m also looking forward to the newest version of one of my favorite computer games, Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP). It’s a text-based simulation (no animated graphics) of the National Pasttime where you can be the manager, general manager and/or owner of a team, and, in a limited way, the Commissioner of Baseball. It’s an amazingly in-depth game. Check it out if it interests you. The new version, 10 or X, is due out “sometime this spring.” I’ve spent many hours absorbed in this award-winning game. More later. If you have clear skies tonight in Montana and elsewhere in North America, you can see a spectacular meeting of Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon. Look towards the southwest after sunset and you should have no problem seeing the moon above the two planets. Here in Yeosu, we were treated to a bit of a different configuration. The moon was below the planets, which gave us this very pretty and large “Smiley Face.” I pulled this image off the web. The photo was taken in Thailand, I believe, but it mirrors what we saw here in Yeosu.
For a few days this week, I was focused on the heavens. On Tuesday, the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Atlantis flew overhead, both easily visible to the naked eye, with the ISS particularly bright–brighter than any star, at about -2.5 magnitude, according to Heavens Above. The Shuttle was about 20 degrees ahead of the ISS, after separating from it the day before. The previous evening, the two were supposed to have been very close together, forming a more spectacular, tight, naked-eye duo soaring in tandem across the evening sky. However, at that time their altitude above the horizon was too low to be seen at my location. It was still a great sight on Tuesday, with the two artificial “stars” taking about six minutes to make their way from north to south, though they were only visible at the camp for, I estimated, about 4 minutes. The following night, Wednesday, was the equally awesome total lunar eclipse. The event started about 9:45 p.m., my time, with totality lasting from 11 p.m. to midnight. I stayed up watching reddish-orange Luna until about 11:30, way past my normal bedtime. I slept in the next morning, forgoing my usual jog. I took some photos, but none of them turned out very well. The one below is probably the best of the lot. The bright “star” at the bottom of the photo, just to the left of an imaginary line drawn straight down from the moon, is Saturn.
Speaking of jogging, I went beyond my previous longest time last Saturday by clocking in at an hour and 23 minutes, 14 laps around the warning tracks of the four fields. I’m nearing my short-term goal of jogging for an hour and a half, and now I’m looking at, hopefully, being able to do 2 hours, non-stop, by July. That’s about 20 laps, and it sounds approachable. It’s good to see some results of the morning run and of other exercising I’ve been doing–my weight is now in the low 190s. (I can hear you snickering out there–that’s pounds, not kilograms!) I should be able to get some photographs of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, now that burning season is here. It’s the time of year when the surrounding farmers and landowners start burning their old scrub brush, filling the air with smoke and particles, which scatter and reflect the sunlight (something like that, anyway) much more than cleaner air does. That’s another reason to go jogging in the early morning–there’s not as much smoke in the air, though there is a faint gray haze over the camp as the sun rises, and the “campfire” smell is always present. Who’s lieing–Clemens or McNamee? I suspect they both are, but I don’t really care. The baseball season is upon us–the season when all of the Red Sox dreams of dynasty fade into harsh reality under the Yankee onslaught. Why? There’s a a new manager (Girardi), a potentially lethal crop of young, home-grown pitchers, and it’s the last year the team will play in The Old Stadium, before moving across the street to the new Yankee Stadium next year. The All Star Game will be played at the old ballpark this year, as will the World Series. The ghosts of Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Mantle and Co., though they’ll be making the short journey to the new ballpark, will make their presence felt throughout this final year in The House That Ruth Built. Contrary to Boston fans’ desperate hope that the Yanks are down and out, there are going to be many championships to come for the Bombers–more now, and many more later. Geez, we had a real slam-bang of a thunderstorm/rainstorm yesterday, a deluge more furious than anything Noel hit us with, and it was even pushing water into my room, under the door. It lasted about half an hour and left the fields, which had more or less dried out, drenched with more water than I’ve ever seen them covered with before. So, today’s games were cancelled and tomorrow’s play is in doubt. Now, with all the rain recently, we’re being overrun by mosquitoes, hordes of them. The grounds crew sprayed everywhere today (with who knows what) to try to lessen the problem. Hopefully, the little critters won’t thrive on it. Despite (or because of) the early afternoon storm yesterday, last night was very clear, and I finally got a chance to look for Comet Holmes, an amazing object that exploded from being the brightness of Pluto into a naked-eye treat. I bought some binoculars, a pair of Nikon Action 12x50s, while I was back in the U.S., and they provided a glorious view of this exceptional comet. You can look for it in the constellation Perseus. Here’s a story about it and a sky chart. |
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