K-Squared Ramblings

Mars, Twitter Stats, TTW etc.

• RT @lol_spam Irony: Someone just sent me email spam plugging the spam control features of their Twitter client. *headdesk* #
• Very cool! RT @ThisIsTrue COOL pic: Mars Orbiter gets photo of Mars rover, including tire tracks. #nasa #
• Interesting: graphs of your Twitter usage by hour, day, replies, retweets, etc. tweetstats.com #
• Kinda wanted to see Time Traveler’s Wife, but ad campaign & insistence that it’s not scifi are pushing me away. Low tomatometer not helping. #
• Note to self: No more light chocolate syrup. 50% less calories/carbs doesn’t help if you have to use twice as much to match the flavor. #

Look! Up in the Sky!

The event runs from October 1–15, so there’s only 4 nights left! Get out there, and take a look at the stars!

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.

Stars

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.

Daytime… Comet?

Well, I tried again at lunch to see if I could spot Comet McNaughton during the day, just in case it was still bright enough. No luck, but I set my camera on max zoom and took a set of pictures in roughly the right area, just to see if I could spot something.

And, well, I did. I’m just not sure what. This was 1:28 pm (33.66 N, 117.75 W), looking roughly southwest, with the sun placed behind a wall to the right. The sun is to the right and above the frame. I don’t have a good sense of distance in the sky, but this is in the right direction to be either Venus or the comet.

Or it could be a passing high-altitude airplane that I didn’t notice.

If it is the comet, the tail is completely invisible, as it should be stretching down to the lower left (away from the sun) and I can’t make anything like that appear with any of the image enhancement tools I’ve tried.

This is unprocessed. All I did was load it from the camera and crop it. And here’s a copy of the whole photo (this was at full ~3x zoom on a Canon PowerShot SD600) with the position of the object and the rough position of the sun pointed out.

Comet!

The skies were surprisingly clear today. Four of us at work walked outside after sunset to a bridge near the office, and saw Comet McNaught. It was visible from ~5:10/5:15 to 5:28, at which point it slipped below the line of hills to the west.

We saw it against the red sky, slowly dropping through the (fortunately sparse) clouds. It was easily visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy white spot, with a hint of a tail pointing straight up that was a lot clearer in binoculars. The tail looked like a U or a V, fanning out at what looked like (but probably wasn’t) a 45° angle.

Well, my fingers are finally warming up. (I made the mistake of not grabbing my jacket, and went out just in my sweater.) Time to wrap stuff up.

Update January 13: I managed to catch another glimpse of it tonight. Unfortunately I was just arriving at the shop to pick up my car, and it was just closing, so I didn’t have a chance to watch it set (or see much more than a fuzzy white dot.) My watch said 5:02. By the time I got out, it had set beneath the building across the street, and there just wasn’t anywhere nearby enough with a clearer view of the western horizon.

On the plus side, I did manage to spot Venus while the sky was still light, and get a picture. It’s not quite as exciting as spotting it at one in the afternoon, but by adding more blue, you get an idea of what that looked like:

Update January 14:

I was looking over the photos I took last night (Saturday) and discovered I could actually find it by messing around with levels. On the left is the original photo, with a little bit of color correction to match what the sky looked like. The background’s still too bright to see the comet, though it was visible to the eye. On the right, I’ve adjusted the heck out of the image, and there’s a very slight bright spot right where it should be (I framed the shot so that the comet would be near the light pole, making it easier to find). Actually, now that I look at it again, it’s just barely visible in the less-processed photo on the left.

Also, this is cool: the comet has gotten bright enough to be spotted in daylight. (via Slashdot) I didn’t have any luck looking for it this afternoon, but I chalk that up to lower altitude and city haze.

Update January 15: I spotted something today, but I’m not sure what…

No comet for you!

I’ve been hoping for the last few nights to get out around sunset and look for Comet McNaught. Unfortunately, it’s been cloudy all week by the time sunset rolls around. And in a couple of days, it’ll slip past the sun and appear in the morning sky instead. At that point, I won’t have a chance of seeing it. Even if I could get myself out of bed before dawn, the eastern horizon is blocked by mountains.

Atlantis home

Space Shuttle Atlantis has landed safely. *whew!* I’m getting more nervous about shuttle missions lately. In part, it’s the greater focus on all the things that could go wrong. In part, it’s the realization that you know, the shuttle fleet really is aging.

But mostly, I think it’s the fear that, given reactions to the Columbia disaster, our nation may be only one disaster away from writing off space—or at least humans in space—entirely.

Speaking of Atlantis, the Bad Astronomy posted a fantastic photo by Thierry Legault of the shuttle and the International Space Station passing in front of the sun!

Pluto Needs Rocks

I went to Worldcon 64/L.A.Con IV on Saturday. Mainly I went to a couple of panels, checked out the art show and the dealer’s room, and looked at some exhibits.

Out in the exhibit hall, near the art show, someone had set up this display:

It’s too small to read at this size, so I’ve transcribed it: Read the rest of this entry »

Hollywood and Space

Some interesting comments by Warren Ellis in today’s Bad Signal on film budgets, and Superman Returns in particular.

$250 million puts you in spacelaunch-budget territory. For $250 million WB could’ve given Bryan Singer his own communications satellite and spent the change on a George Clooney movie.

This is the absurdity of modern Hollywood; that taking more than the GNP of Luxembourg in a single weekend is not actually enough to put a movie in the black.

It’s the “spacelaunch” comment that I find most interesting, as I made the same comparison a few years ago, from the other side of the fence: Assuming that the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars are typical, price-wise, it doesn’t make sense to complain that we’re “wasting” money on space exploration when a mission costs as much as two summer blockbusters. Manned missions are, of course, more expensive, but robotic missions? If we, as a society, toss away $250 million several times a year on mindless action flicks, what’s so terrible about spending a similar amount to learn something about our universe?

Yes, I know the difference is public vs. private funding. Movies are financed by studios and private investors, and space exploration is usually financed by governments, and therefore by taxes. But comparing the dollar amounts puts things in a different perspective—whether you’re astonished by the literally astronomical movie budgets, or realizing that exploring outer space is more down to Earth than it seems at first glance.