K-Squared Ramblings

Fire by Night

With the winds dying down, the smoke from the Santiago Fire clung loosely to the mountains most of the day. Unfortunately, smoke from the new fires down on Camp Pendleton drifted up the coast to take its place, bringing back the yellowish sunlight. Also, without the wind to clear them away, ashes left a thorough coating on anything outside. Work was somewhat calmer, with everyone (and their houses) finally accounted for. Power kept flickering throughout the afternoon, though. Between 4:30 and 5:00, something massive flared up, sending a new plume of smoke into the sky.

I ended up leaving the office after dark, giving me a chance to take some pictures of the orange moon (it was actually a bit past first quarter on Sunday, and it’s not quite full today*).

I also went looking for spots to take pictures of the red glow coming from the mountains. There’s a bridge near the office where I frequently take pictures of the hills, and I managed to find a spot where I could set up my mini-tripod and still have a view of the glow. There was one brighter patch which seemed to be changing shape, which I figured might actually be flames.

Afterward, I drove up to a cul-de-sac on Quail Hill which I’d discovered at lunch. I just parked my car at the end of the road, put the camera on top of it, and started trying shutter speeds.

The vantage point gave me a better sense of geography. The Irvine Spectrum area lies in the foreground, with the 4 tall office buildings (the two in the middle are under construction) and the bright neon proclaiming the movie theater. The shopping center stretches off to the right. The empty area behind them consists of undeveloped land from the former El Toro Marine Base and the hills that burned earlier this week. The clusters of lights about 1/3 of the way up are, I think, Foothill Ranch. That places the glowing area in Santiago Canyon.

Even though some of the houses up on Quail Hill seemed to still be under construction, they had an efficient neighborhood watch going. I must have been there only 3 minutes before a van pulled up into a nearby space. A guy stepped out. No labels, no uniform. I said something along the lines of, “Hello, I’m taking pictures of the glow from Saddleback.” He said, “It’s still going, huh?” “Yeah.” I muttered something about exposure times, and he got back into his van and drove off.

*Strangely, I just discovered that my Nightmare Before Christmas calendar has the phases of the moon shifted… well, out of phase. It lists a new moon for Friday instead of a full moon. Everything else is consistent with this placement. Except reality.

Lunar Eclipse pics

I decided to go for it, and set my alarm for 2:30 AM (ick) to see the eclipse. The moon was nearing totality at that point, with a too-shallow crescent near the bottom and the rest in slightly reddish shadow. My original plan was to lie down on the balcony and watch, but it turned out there was a tree in the way, but if I went over to the other end, by the patio table, I was able to see it.

I watched as the crescent shrank to a sliver, and finally the moon was shaded dark red to dull red to light red to a much dimmer white than usual. The deeper reds slowly spread across its face, edging out the brighter colors near the edge of the Earth’s shadow.

I brought my cheesy little digital camera, and took some photos. It promptly started warning me the battery was low, and I had to dig around in the dark to find the spare. I think this is the best of the pictures, as far as showing the eclipsed moon itself goes:

Eclipsed Moon, 3:13 AM

Earlier in the evening I was testing different shutter settings. I thought this photo from the floor of the balcony turned out interesting:

Yes, that’s lit by moonlight (in a long exposure).

OK, I’m going out to take one last look at the moon (I think I heard the downstairs neighbors’ door open a few minutes ago, so at least I’m not the only one up for this) and then go back to bed. I’ll look through my photos again tomorrow and post anything else that looks good.

Update: Here’s a shot from deeper in totality, just after the mid-point of the eclipse:

Eclipsed Moon, 3:40 AM

And here’s the Pleiades, which I spotted when I turned around and looked up. A far cry from this, but hey, I figured I was doing pretty well to be getting photos of stars with this type of camera in the first place.

I think the last time I saw the Pleiades, Hyades, Taurus and Orion in August, I was something like 14 and on a trip with my scout troop to do whitewater rafting. We slept out under the stars and I just happened to wake up at 3 in the morning.

OK, sleep is calling to me. Signing off…

Update 2: After I went to bed, I realized that I shouldn’t have dismissed my idea of scrounging up some film and pulling my manual SLR camera out of the closet. Between the better optics, more shutter control, and an actual telephoto lens, I probably would have gotten considerably better pictures. I just don’t think we have any rolls of film lying around that haven’t expired, and I didn’t want to run out at 11:00 to get some. Ah, well. Something to think about for next time.

Also, I realized that these blurry pictures look kind of like a Moon-sized version of Mars. Hmm, that might confuse some people.

Update 3: You have to check out Thursday’s APOD: an incredible telescopic image of the moon taken during totality.

Lunar Indecision

I’m still trying to decide whether I should set an alarm to wake myself up at ski-o’clock in the morning to see tonight’s/tomorrow’s lunar eclipse. I mean, I skipped the Perseid meteor shower a few weeks ago, but that would have required not only getting up in the wee hours of the night, but driving somewhere with less light pollution.

I mean, I should be able to walk outside and look out at a blood-red moon… at 3:00 in the morning.

*grrr*

(links via BA Blog)

Update: Ah, the wonders of text search and delayed indexing. It seems that lots of people are searching for the phrase, “eclipse tomorrow,” leading to a spike in hits to this entry from last March… even though today’s post would be a more appropriate destination.

Update 2: I went for it. Here’s my write-up.

Pumpkin Moon

We were driving home from visiting relatives this evening, and noticed a dull orange ellipse on the horizon, appearing and disappearing between trees. It didn’t take long to realize it was the moon, just beginning to rise.

As the freeway twisted and turned, and we went through areas full of houses, retail centers, and trees, we lost and regained sight of it. The moon illusion was in full effect, making it look huge, plus the bottom edge was flattened, just like the sun at sunset—only you can look at the moon much longer. (Well, except when you’re driving.)

It rose through a bank of clouds or haze, climbing through dark bands, and slowly turned from orange to yellow, then turned paler. By the time we got home at 10:00, it had assumed its normal circular shape (with a tiny bit shaved from the upper right, since it was a day past full), and didn’t look particularly bigger than usual.

We don’t get to see the moon so close to the horizon very often. For one thing there are mountains to the east, but more importantly there are buildings all around. As we saw with the drive home, it doesn’t take much height to block the horizon from view. By the time we got home, roughly an hour past moonrise, it was just visible over the tops of the nearby buildings from our balcony.

Wow

If you haven’t already, go over and look at today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. It’s an incredible shot of the Moon and Venus during last weekend’s conjunction.

Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow

There’s a lunar eclipse tomorrow. It looks like we’ll only get to see the tail end of it here in California, right at moonrise. Europe and Africa get to see the whole thing.

Interestingly, the map of where the eclipse will be visible manages to cover the major land masses almost exactly. The only region that won’t see it at all is the Pacific Ocean.

(via SANS ISC)

Crescent moon and Venus

I walked out the front door last night around 5:50 to pick up the mail, and immediately walked back in to get the camera, because this is what I saw:

My parents gave me a flexible mini-tripod for Christmas, and it proved very helpful here, as there was nowhere flat where I could set the camera and still get a good view. I ended up coiling it around a stair railing, which held the camera in place long enough to get a decent exposure.

I seriously thought about pulling my SLR camera out of the closet and seeing whether I had any film for it, but ultimately decided against it.

Moon over Saddleback

I took this photo a few weeks back after a rainstorm dusted the local mountains with snow.

This is the same view as the third picture in this snowblogging post, taken at sunset that evening with a nearly-full moon. I decided not to include it in that post, but couldn’t bring myself to toss the cropped photo.

The Moon and Venus, sitting in a tree

This view of the Moon and Venus was taken from our apartment balcony earlier this evening.

I also took a picture yesterday, from the top of a parking structure near John Wayne Airport (we went to a show at UCI later that evening.) You can see the red trail an airplane left as it crossed the frame:

Having seen that pairing last night, I knew I had to be ready to catch it today! I figured the Moon would be a lot closer, but I hadn’t expected it to actually pass Venus tonight. It really gives you an idea of how far the Moon moves in 24 hours. (or, in this case, roughly 23 hours, since yesterday’s picture was taken at 6:00 and today’s was taken at 5:10).

To be honest, I wasn’t actually certain it was Venus. It was my first thought, because of the brightness and the color, but I kept thinking it was too far from the sun. I kept trying to convince myself it was Jupiter or maybe Saturn (it wasn’t red enough for Mars, and besides, I’d seen Mars on the other side of the sky the night before). When I looked it up and realized it was Venus, I started remembering my days in high school when I would walk to school for a 7:00am “zero period” class. In winter it would sometimes be just dark enough when I left to see the planets and the brightest stars. I would keep my eye on Venus as the sky brightened, trying to see how late I could still see it by knowing exactly where to look.

(P.S. sorry for the repeated updates—I accidentally hit “Publish” instead of “Save and Continue”)

Look, up in the sky!

A few nights ago I was walking around sunset, and decided to look for something that had been mentioned last week on the Astronomy Picture of the Day: the Belt of Venus.

Somehow I’d never noticed that after sunset, the band of red encircles the entire sky at the horizon. Even more amazing, if you look away from the sun you can actually see the Earth’s shadow on the sky as a slightly darker blue below the pink. It reminded me of the view of Mauna Kea’s shadow on the cloud layer below. Oddly, though I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time, the Belt of Venus is clearly visible in that photo!

I guess at sunset I’m most likely to be looking at, well, the sunset. Or focusing on whatever it is I’m doing at the time.

This was Thursday night, so the moon was almost full. It rose just below the Belt of Venus, just inside the shadow. So close to the horizon, the moon illusion was in full effect, and it looked huge!

And me without my camera. *sigh*

On Google Moon

Google Maps has been extended to the moon, with all the Apollo landing sites marked.

Be sure to experiment with zoom for full effect.