Yesterday about as clear as a bell as one might hope to get in these parts, negligible wind. Hit my sunspots again mid afternoon.
Sun was setting as I started setting up - scheduled 16:52. Had Jupiter easily in the glasses at 17:00 - twelve minutes ahead of schedule. Saturn, "from user-specified location not observable", ten minutes later. Could still get them both in the same field of view, with little to spare, in the 95 at full (70) zoom - 1.09 degrees. (Toldyaso.)
This website obviously must be using a formula assuming no glass, crap sky, and lotsa light pollution. With the scope at low power I was immediately able to get rings and separation and late in the game when the southwestern sky had darkened I could get it - dimly - unaided.
Air Force - whose house it is that limits my cul-de-sac shot and my only customer for the mission - came out when it was dark enough to start getting moon. We soon had all four - Callisto, Ganymede, Io upwind Europa well out down.
He bailed as Saturn started getting eaten by branches, I wasn't gonna fuck with the cul-de-sac and immediately thereafter packed up and bailed for my farm drive. Set up, reacquired. Blazing full Moon coming up through the trees directly behind me. Planets low and majorly swimming. But that's when I had Saturn unaided.
It was maybe just over freezing and felt bitterly cold but I felt obligated to stay on my planets again until the bitter end.
Took a moment to swing 180 and hit the Moon. Learned on that one that you can tell it's actually full when there aren't any crater shadows in any edge areas. And so much for my night vision for a while after that one. Subsequent checks were with the stabilized binocular.
I decided to track them down through the trees again. Held onto Saturn until a final little pulse at 18:32, shifted to Jupiter for a final glow at 18:38. Set times were 18:40 and 18:44. Got back home severely chilled and in bad shape.
I'm now hoping to get clouded out - totally or at least enough to shut things down early enough to prevent me from feeling obligated to go back to my low horizon station. Forecast looking good (mostly cloudy) for tonight and great (rain) Thursday and Friday.
It would be interesting though to see how my reality here matches the predictions of http://in-the-sky.org/. Solar Conjunctions (straight out behind the Sun) for Jupiter and Saturn are 01/28-23 so definitely well shy of those dates. And maybe I'll be able to score all the other two gas giants planets as these two are fading out and diminishing as a major astronomical event.
birds
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Pretty warm, still lotsa sun in early afternoon, did some target practice on the Sun from the back deck. My line of sunspots had migrated down towards four o'clock and rotated counterclockwise an eighth of a turn.
Wanted to see what my planets landing point looked like in broad daylight, rolled, set up where I'd nearly frozen to death the night before, lined up the scope. On the near side of the woodlot I had a Flicker dead centered. (Hope I can pull that trick again on my Annapolis Christmas Count territory Sunday.)
Thought some of the stuff blocking my below treeline view might've been conifers but no - all deciduous. Just some areas of leafless but dense high branches and clumped and/or lined up trunks.
Noticed several Turkey Vultures maneuvering low and close in to the south and used them for scope target practice. Then found that they were landing on the rim of a cylindrical concrete cattle watering facility 187 yards south of scope position tanking up, spreading wings to soak up sun, hanging out. Close to a dozen of them.
Returned home, checked the weather, watched the sky, prepped for Home Base. Sky was looking real good for the time being but rather ugly - consistent with the forecast - upwind to the west. At 16:45 the target area was clear but it was still to light, as we approached 17:00 doable dark blotches of scud started racing in and taking over. Still broken enough to be able to expect several hits though.
Got a movement of both flavors of Vultures low and close in the direction of interest - undoubtedly prepping for roost.
Kept scanning the area identified by the iPhone with the binocular, finally got a nice solid Jupiter at 17:15 for a couple seconds before I tried to target the scope, but that was gonna be it for the mission.
Waited for some last hope areas to drift into position but they turned out to be too little too late and I bailed. That was about what I'd been hoping for anyway. Another night in the ballpark of last would've finished me off.
I'd had a nice pair of leather gloves for a zillion years, lived in the backpack that goes with me everywhere, had been used on all Conjunction missions - up till Sunday, when I didn't have them anymore. Had been substantially bummed out about that.
As I started setting up at Home Base this evening I spotted them on the edge of the lawn just behind scope position - and had a faint memory of setting them down in that area "for just a moment" while I took care of some issue that required them being off.
There is no freakin' way I'd been setting up there the previous three successive nights and not seen them. Somebody had to have picked them up, taken them home, put two and two together, put them back there for me. Seems not every instance of good deeding goes unpunished.
Next two windows still looking like safe scrubs. Looking forward to them.
Wanted to see what my planets landing point looked like in broad daylight, rolled, set up where I'd nearly frozen to death the night before, lined up the scope. On the near side of the woodlot I had a Flicker dead centered. (Hope I can pull that trick again on my Annapolis Christmas Count territory Sunday.)
Thought some of the stuff blocking my below treeline view might've been conifers but no - all deciduous. Just some areas of leafless but dense high branches and clumped and/or lined up trunks.
Noticed several Turkey Vultures maneuvering low and close in to the south and used them for scope target practice. Then found that they were landing on the rim of a cylindrical concrete cattle watering facility 187 yards south of scope position tanking up, spreading wings to soak up sun, hanging out. Close to a dozen of them.
Returned home, checked the weather, watched the sky, prepped for Home Base. Sky was looking real good for the time being but rather ugly - consistent with the forecast - upwind to the west. At 16:45 the target area was clear but it was still to light, as we approached 17:00 doable dark blotches of scud started racing in and taking over. Still broken enough to be able to expect several hits though.
Got a movement of both flavors of Vultures low and close in the direction of interest - undoubtedly prepping for roost.
Kept scanning the area identified by the iPhone with the binocular, finally got a nice solid Jupiter at 17:15 for a couple seconds before I tried to target the scope, but that was gonna be it for the mission.
Waited for some last hope areas to drift into position but they turned out to be too little too late and I bailed. That was about what I'd been hoping for anyway. Another night in the ballpark of last would've finished me off.
I'd had a nice pair of leather gloves for a zillion years, lived in the backpack that goes with me everywhere, had been used on all Conjunction missions - up till Sunday, when I didn't have them anymore. Had been substantially bummed out about that.
As I started setting up at Home Base this evening I spotted them on the edge of the lawn just behind scope position - and had a faint memory of setting them down in that area "for just a moment" while I took care of some issue that required them being off.
There is no freakin' way I'd been setting up there the previous three successive nights and not seen them. Somebody had to have picked them up, taken them home, put two and two together, put them back there for me. Seems not every instance of good deeding goes unpunished.
Next two windows still looking like safe scrubs. Looking forward to them.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
All evenings through this past one have been very safe scrubs - really needed the break. Did get some early afternoon shots at the Sun. Spots are gone - probably to the far side at least initially.
Found out from one of my former customers that my hypothesis regarding my reappearing gloves was pretty spot on. But they'd been recovered from opposite sides of the street. Weird. No clue as to how that happened.
She also told me that some neighborhood folk had bailed 'cause of bug concerns. Kinda stupid in my humble opinion. I don't wear my mask out beyond the exit of the grocery store but I do maintain safe distancing. And if anyone were to be that paranoid I'd have been happy to lock on target and clear five yards downwind. There are situations in which this virus is being transmitted and it's not happening on ones like this.
Did the Annapolis Christmas Count yesterday and am very happy to have it behind me. Day was heavily overcast, cold. Supposed to have been light rain in the first half. Dodged that but very light but constant drizzle swapped over to the second. Could've been worse but it was not pleasant. From the community pier - 38°58'37.22" N =76°36'20.55" W - one airborne adult Eagle, one parked Redtail audio only. And that was it for me for raptors for the day. Not even a vulture of either flavor.
The 2020/11 installment of my bug has radiated out extensively from Ground Zero behind my left ear and is currently claiming a lot of territory. I'm no longer terrified that it will just keep spreading and going forever - like I was for a long time during the 2019/02-2020/10 - but it's still a fairly major issue and the pain costs me a lot of sleep and wears me down. And I was not in great shape after coming back up the 129 steps I needed to leave behind me to get reasonably level with civilization, the road, the car.
My next park-and-walk stop was the powerlines cut back out the main drag a short roll to the SW. I parked and emerged, a neighborhood guy with a couple kids and a dog out for a short stroll immediately pinged in on me and came over to see if I was OK. Not really... but no need to call 911.
And he (the rest of the party had turned back for home) was really interested in what I was doing, birds, vultures, wildlife, how the Count worked, the history of the property (I'd been around for over a half century's worth)... Really helped brighten up a really dreary day.
He bailed for a family trip to the Eastern Shore, the very light drizzle started, I pulled out the Gore-Tex and stowed the Canon glasses and clipped on the Leitz 7x42's. (The former's rain guard is total placebo crap.)
There's a little marsh area at 38°58'08.37" N 076°37'01.23" W where I used to be able to score Field Sparrows and... Got one! Amongst a bunch of White-Throats.
Traditionally at the conclusions of these Count days the participants all congregate at some public facility - government building, school, restaurant - to turn in and compile reports, do a call of all the relevant species, see who got what and how... We did this one on Zoom. And I suspect that after we get this bug under some reasonable level of control we might well continue doing these tallies on Zoom.
(Our compiler said that anybody who hadn't scored Juncos for the day should resign. Had to put my hand up.)
Local weather has made Jupiter totally undoable subsequent to my 2020/12/30 blink - and probably and hopefully that trend will continue until after tomorrow evening. I'm so massively wiped now.
Found out from one of my former customers that my hypothesis regarding my reappearing gloves was pretty spot on. But they'd been recovered from opposite sides of the street. Weird. No clue as to how that happened.
She also told me that some neighborhood folk had bailed 'cause of bug concerns. Kinda stupid in my humble opinion. I don't wear my mask out beyond the exit of the grocery store but I do maintain safe distancing. And if anyone were to be that paranoid I'd have been happy to lock on target and clear five yards downwind. There are situations in which this virus is being transmitted and it's not happening on ones like this.
Did the Annapolis Christmas Count yesterday and am very happy to have it behind me. Day was heavily overcast, cold. Supposed to have been light rain in the first half. Dodged that but very light but constant drizzle swapped over to the second. Could've been worse but it was not pleasant. From the community pier - 38°58'37.22" N =76°36'20.55" W - one airborne adult Eagle, one parked Redtail audio only. And that was it for me for raptors for the day. Not even a vulture of either flavor.
The 2020/11 installment of my bug has radiated out extensively from Ground Zero behind my left ear and is currently claiming a lot of territory. I'm no longer terrified that it will just keep spreading and going forever - like I was for a long time during the 2019/02-2020/10 - but it's still a fairly major issue and the pain costs me a lot of sleep and wears me down. And I was not in great shape after coming back up the 129 steps I needed to leave behind me to get reasonably level with civilization, the road, the car.
My next park-and-walk stop was the powerlines cut back out the main drag a short roll to the SW. I parked and emerged, a neighborhood guy with a couple kids and a dog out for a short stroll immediately pinged in on me and came over to see if I was OK. Not really... but no need to call 911.
And he (the rest of the party had turned back for home) was really interested in what I was doing, birds, vultures, wildlife, how the Count worked, the history of the property (I'd been around for over a half century's worth)... Really helped brighten up a really dreary day.
He bailed for a family trip to the Eastern Shore, the very light drizzle started, I pulled out the Gore-Tex and stowed the Canon glasses and clipped on the Leitz 7x42's. (The former's rain guard is total placebo crap.)
There's a little marsh area at 38°58'08.37" N 076°37'01.23" W where I used to be able to score Field Sparrows and... Got one! Amongst a bunch of White-Throats.
Traditionally at the conclusions of these Count days the participants all congregate at some public facility - government building, school, restaurant - to turn in and compile reports, do a call of all the relevant species, see who got what and how... We did this one on Zoom. And I suspect that after we get this bug under some reasonable level of control we might well continue doing these tallies on Zoom.
(Our compiler said that anybody who hadn't scored Juncos for the day should resign. Had to put my hand up.)
Local weather has made Jupiter totally undoable subsequent to my 2020/12/30 blink - and probably and hopefully that trend will continue until after tomorrow evening. I'm so massively wiped now.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Every evening since my 2020/12/30 up until this past one have been safe total scrubs - much to my relief. Yesterday was clear as a bell. Did a Sun shot early afternoon, no spots, figured out a technique for targeting the Sun without frying a retina and amended my scope article accordingly.
Local (based on coordinates) sunset was 17:00. When I started this project on 2020/12/11 it was 16:44 - and it's been getting steadily later ever since. That doesn't seem to make any sense. You'd expect it to bottom out on 2020/12/21 - the winter solstice - but sunrise doesn't do what it's supposed to either. Guess it depends on where you're sitting longitudinally in the time zone. Earliest sunset here was 2020/12/07 16:43 (07:12) but latest sunrise was 2021/01/04-05 at 07:26 - 14 days before and 14.5 days after solstice. (That balances out rather nicely.)
I was feeling substantially crappier than usual and the southwestern sky - as usual - started getting trashy when you most wanted it not to but I rolled for my pastures spot at about sunset, started setting up the scope and scanning with the glasses. There were clouds low on the horizon but lotsa space between and odds looked pretty good.
A farm resident showed with a pickup loaded with recycle stuff for the curb, got interested, I got a nice Jupiter disk with the glasses. But the sky was still too light for me to get it unaided - which makes it a bit difficult to target with the scope. And he wasn't having any luck finding it with the glasses. But I got it locked up soon enough and he got his shot and rolled.
I stayed and eventually picked up Saturn - with a fair bit of daylight left. Got color, rings, separation no problem. There were zillions of Canada Geese in the field to my south and I was getting them airborne in the scope and having them fully eclipsing my planets (not for the first time at that site). As the light faded Jupiter's moons started coming through - Ganymede, Europa, Io, Jupiter, Callisto.
An extensive serious low cloud eventually ate both planets. Lost Jupiter at about 17:38- not far into Nautical Twilight - and was happy to be able to bail guilt free and not frozen to the core.
This is now almost entirely a daylight experience. That definitely has its downsides but it's still pretty cool that it's so easily doable.
Things looking pretty marginal for showtime tonight, clear as a bell for tomorrow.
Local (based on coordinates) sunset was 17:00. When I started this project on 2020/12/11 it was 16:44 - and it's been getting steadily later ever since. That doesn't seem to make any sense. You'd expect it to bottom out on 2020/12/21 - the winter solstice - but sunrise doesn't do what it's supposed to either. Guess it depends on where you're sitting longitudinally in the time zone. Earliest sunset here was 2020/12/07 16:43 (07:12) but latest sunrise was 2021/01/04-05 at 07:26 - 14 days before and 14.5 days after solstice. (That balances out rather nicely.)
I was feeling substantially crappier than usual and the southwestern sky - as usual - started getting trashy when you most wanted it not to but I rolled for my pastures spot at about sunset, started setting up the scope and scanning with the glasses. There were clouds low on the horizon but lotsa space between and odds looked pretty good.
A farm resident showed with a pickup loaded with recycle stuff for the curb, got interested, I got a nice Jupiter disk with the glasses. But the sky was still too light for me to get it unaided - which makes it a bit difficult to target with the scope. And he wasn't having any luck finding it with the glasses. But I got it locked up soon enough and he got his shot and rolled.
I stayed and eventually picked up Saturn - with a fair bit of daylight left. Got color, rings, separation no problem. There were zillions of Canada Geese in the field to my south and I was getting them airborne in the scope and having them fully eclipsing my planets (not for the first time at that site). As the light faded Jupiter's moons started coming through - Ganymede, Europa, Io, Jupiter, Callisto.
An extensive serious low cloud eventually ate both planets. Lost Jupiter at about 17:38- not far into Nautical Twilight - and was happy to be able to bail guilt free and not frozen to the core.
This is now almost entirely a daylight experience. That definitely has its downsides but it's still pretty cool that it's so easily doable.
Things looking pretty marginal for showtime tonight, clear as a bell for tomorrow.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Yeah, 2021/01/08 evening was the total wash it was forecasted to have been and today was clear as a bell. Afternoon target practice on the sun, was up and running at my pastures station at 17:00 expecting to hit Jupiter in short order but that wasn't happening.
Lit up the iPhone for Sky Walk 2 but again got total garbage. Undoubtedly the compass calibration issue again. Shut it down to see if a reboot would fix things but it stayed shut down - despite having reported a 100% charge minutes prior. Original battery, totally fried, but I "never" use it when it's not plugged in.
Also... Note to self:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86yUpUt8U6s
Do that every time just before heading out - and/or after arriving on site if ya get set up and have a minute to kill.
But I knew where the Sun had just disappeared and the path to that point on which to backtrack to find it. But wasn't able to score until 17:18.
And there was fine haze low on the horizon - and we were already pretty low on the horizon - so Saturn took forever to shine through. And when it did it initially just appeared as a substantially elongated sphere. But eventually I was able to get rings and separation.
And this was the first time since I started playing this game that I couldn't got the two planets in the same frame simultaneously - using the 95 at min zoom. Just a wee bit too much separation. And that's obviously part of what was causing Saturn's substantially delayed appearance - it's catching up to the Sun a whole lot faster than Jupiter is (from where we're sitting).
The order tonight was Callisto, Io, Jupiter, Europa, Ganymede. The first was well upwind, the second was too close to differentiate. I got Ganymede - way downwind - after a bit of a wait but Europa took its sweet time.
Also at a point when Jupiter was still pretty high I caught brilliant gleam straight and way the hell below it - and not much above the treeline. At first I thought it was a distant jet coming straight toward me but it was moving in the right direction and at the right speed to be a planet. Figured it had to be Mercury.
I have probably seen and had Mercury identified for me - in addition to the little black dot phenomenon I had for the 2019/11/11 transit - but it's on my unambiguous fer sure list now.
At some point while locked onto another target Saturn vanished on me and stayed vanished.
Interesting phenomenon going on for this one. Your first lock on Jupiter was no better or worse than any other lock you were gonna get. Your first lock sucked a bit 'cause there was so much daylight left and your last luck sucked a bit 'cause you had to look at a low angle through so much atmospheric crud. It was an almost prefect balance/trade-off. Oversimplified but not by much. And I'm sure this pattern will continue until Jupiter becomes totally undoable.
Mercury got away from me while I was doing Jupiter and I stayed with my only remaining target for the rest of the mission. When it was low above the trees and aligned with my gunsight...
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50771437858_c6f97aa51c_o.png
...road I noticed how obvious and brilliant it still was unaided. And I'd figured out that if Saturn had been able to bounce the same candlepower then Jupiter was doing it too and would've made it down through the haze pretty much unfazed.
Stayed with Jupiter down into the trees but wasn't tempted much to go all the way with it as my core temperature was down fifteen degrees and I capped the scope at 18:00. It would hit the perfect horizon at 18:14 - a half hour earlier than what it did for my 2020/12/29 outing.
Tomorrow evening looking excellent, Monday the opposite of excellent.
Lit up the iPhone for Sky Walk 2 but again got total garbage. Undoubtedly the compass calibration issue again. Shut it down to see if a reboot would fix things but it stayed shut down - despite having reported a 100% charge minutes prior. Original battery, totally fried, but I "never" use it when it's not plugged in.
Also... Note to self:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86yUpUt8U6s
Do that every time just before heading out - and/or after arriving on site if ya get set up and have a minute to kill.
But I knew where the Sun had just disappeared and the path to that point on which to backtrack to find it. But wasn't able to score until 17:18.
And there was fine haze low on the horizon - and we were already pretty low on the horizon - so Saturn took forever to shine through. And when it did it initially just appeared as a substantially elongated sphere. But eventually I was able to get rings and separation.
And this was the first time since I started playing this game that I couldn't got the two planets in the same frame simultaneously - using the 95 at min zoom. Just a wee bit too much separation. And that's obviously part of what was causing Saturn's substantially delayed appearance - it's catching up to the Sun a whole lot faster than Jupiter is (from where we're sitting).
The order tonight was Callisto, Io, Jupiter, Europa, Ganymede. The first was well upwind, the second was too close to differentiate. I got Ganymede - way downwind - after a bit of a wait but Europa took its sweet time.
Also at a point when Jupiter was still pretty high I caught brilliant gleam straight and way the hell below it - and not much above the treeline. At first I thought it was a distant jet coming straight toward me but it was moving in the right direction and at the right speed to be a planet. Figured it had to be Mercury.
I have probably seen and had Mercury identified for me - in addition to the little black dot phenomenon I had for the 2019/11/11 transit - but it's on my unambiguous fer sure list now.
At some point while locked onto another target Saturn vanished on me and stayed vanished.
Interesting phenomenon going on for this one. Your first lock on Jupiter was no better or worse than any other lock you were gonna get. Your first lock sucked a bit 'cause there was so much daylight left and your last luck sucked a bit 'cause you had to look at a low angle through so much atmospheric crud. It was an almost prefect balance/trade-off. Oversimplified but not by much. And I'm sure this pattern will continue until Jupiter becomes totally undoable.
Mercury got away from me while I was doing Jupiter and I stayed with my only remaining target for the rest of the mission. When it was low above the trees and aligned with my gunsight...
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50771437858_c6f97aa51c_o.png
...road I noticed how obvious and brilliant it still was unaided. And I'd figured out that if Saturn had been able to bounce the same candlepower then Jupiter was doing it too and would've made it down through the haze pretty much unfazed.
Stayed with Jupiter down into the trees but wasn't tempted much to go all the way with it as my core temperature was down fifteen degrees and I capped the scope at 18:00. It would hit the perfect horizon at 18:14 - a half hour earlier than what it did for my 2020/12/29 outing.
Tomorrow evening looking excellent, Monday the opposite of excellent.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Yesterday clear as a bell all day and into the night as was forecast. Early afternoon setup and target practice on the Sun, got to Pastures a bit before 17:00 with my shit together fairly well, parked, set up, started scanning.
Fields were empty and silent. Geese had decided to spend the night elsewhere - but I still got a fair smattering of close in airborne traffic.
A northbound car slowed way down and the woman at the wheel started looking my way pretty intensely and I waved her in. She was looking for a shot at the Sun (for what reason I never learned but am guessing something in the photo department) and I showed her where but gave her the bad news that it had sunk five minutes ago at 17:02. But hey, stick around for another ten minutes.
Sky was considerably better than it was for the previous mission. Low angle haze was a lot thinner.
A previous customer approached from the neighborhood behind with a couple kids (12, 10) and a Lab in tow.
Soon found Jupiter in a still very light sky - at maybe 17:18, locked on, got everybody ('cept the Lab) shots and everybody was happy. Dad and Yours Truly were the ones who didn't need the stepladder.
Driver rolled for the church up the hill for something related to her mission. Must've scored 'cause she didn't return.
Picked up Mercury not far above the treeline and now lagging below and behind Jupiter at about seven o'clock (position) not far above the treeline and everyone remaining got a shot. It was again going rainbow on me while dead centered in my glass and I'm pretty sure I now understand why.
Mercury has a diameter a bit over our Moon's and an elliptical orbit that bounces it out between 28.6 and 43.4 million miles from the Sun. Right now it's close in and to the left beyond the Sun such that it's not terribly far south of a full disk. The intensity of the sunlight bouncing off of its surface is gonna be off the scale but it almost looks like a point source. It's like looking into a laser. It's always gonna be fairly low on the horizon and thus coming through lotsa atmosphere and highly likely turbulence. And that's what's doing the refracting and creating the colors show.
I wasn't having any luck with Saturn and my family thanked me and bailed. A bit before they'd cleared a hundred yards I nailed it and announced. The dog needed to get home for some reason and Big Brother got that duty but Dad and Little Brother did an about face and returned while I tweaked the dials to get things sharp enough for distinct rings and separation. Got a "WOW!" outta the kid.
Lotsa light and haze. Not seeing it high, sharp, brilliant in a black sky like it had been earlier in the project. But there's a distinct coolness in being able to get it as good as that low looking through all that crud with lotsa daylight left.
They split, I stayed and cycled through the three planets. Followed Saturn and Mercury down far into the trees before losing them then worked on Jupiter to try for a moon or two. Order was Callisto, Europa, Jupiter, Io lost behind Jupiter, Ganymede far out downwind. The latter was all I was able to do after I finally got sufficient darkness.
Again gleaming minus glass low above the treeline beyond my gunsight road. Followed it down into the trees a bit and capped the scope at about 17:58. Didn't get chilled like I did the previous evening but my hands caught some hell putting the equipment away sans gloves.
One takeaway I'm getting from playing this game... I'd always thought of the planets as not standing out all that much from the stars in their backgrounds. These three are blowing everything else totally out of the water. Low on the horizon shortly after sunset there's no such thing as a star. Center any one of the planets in the scope and crank the zoom up all the way and you won't start seeing stars in the background. And I have no doubt the same also holds true for Venus. It's a long time into the game before you can do a 180 to the dark half of the sky and see things beginning to sparkle through.
Tonight looks like a scrub, tomorrow through Thursday looking excellent to real good.
Fields were empty and silent. Geese had decided to spend the night elsewhere - but I still got a fair smattering of close in airborne traffic.
A northbound car slowed way down and the woman at the wheel started looking my way pretty intensely and I waved her in. She was looking for a shot at the Sun (for what reason I never learned but am guessing something in the photo department) and I showed her where but gave her the bad news that it had sunk five minutes ago at 17:02. But hey, stick around for another ten minutes.
Sky was considerably better than it was for the previous mission. Low angle haze was a lot thinner.
A previous customer approached from the neighborhood behind with a couple kids (12, 10) and a Lab in tow.
Soon found Jupiter in a still very light sky - at maybe 17:18, locked on, got everybody ('cept the Lab) shots and everybody was happy. Dad and Yours Truly were the ones who didn't need the stepladder.
Driver rolled for the church up the hill for something related to her mission. Must've scored 'cause she didn't return.
Picked up Mercury not far above the treeline and now lagging below and behind Jupiter at about seven o'clock (position) not far above the treeline and everyone remaining got a shot. It was again going rainbow on me while dead centered in my glass and I'm pretty sure I now understand why.
Mercury has a diameter a bit over our Moon's and an elliptical orbit that bounces it out between 28.6 and 43.4 million miles from the Sun. Right now it's close in and to the left beyond the Sun such that it's not terribly far south of a full disk. The intensity of the sunlight bouncing off of its surface is gonna be off the scale but it almost looks like a point source. It's like looking into a laser. It's always gonna be fairly low on the horizon and thus coming through lotsa atmosphere and highly likely turbulence. And that's what's doing the refracting and creating the colors show.
I wasn't having any luck with Saturn and my family thanked me and bailed. A bit before they'd cleared a hundred yards I nailed it and announced. The dog needed to get home for some reason and Big Brother got that duty but Dad and Little Brother did an about face and returned while I tweaked the dials to get things sharp enough for distinct rings and separation. Got a "WOW!" outta the kid.
Lotsa light and haze. Not seeing it high, sharp, brilliant in a black sky like it had been earlier in the project. But there's a distinct coolness in being able to get it as good as that low looking through all that crud with lotsa daylight left.
They split, I stayed and cycled through the three planets. Followed Saturn and Mercury down far into the trees before losing them then worked on Jupiter to try for a moon or two. Order was Callisto, Europa, Jupiter, Io lost behind Jupiter, Ganymede far out downwind. The latter was all I was able to do after I finally got sufficient darkness.
Again gleaming minus glass low above the treeline beyond my gunsight road. Followed it down into the trees a bit and capped the scope at about 17:58. Didn't get chilled like I did the previous evening but my hands caught some hell putting the equipment away sans gloves.
One takeaway I'm getting from playing this game... I'd always thought of the planets as not standing out all that much from the stars in their backgrounds. These three are blowing everything else totally out of the water. Low on the horizon shortly after sunset there's no such thing as a star. Center any one of the planets in the scope and crank the zoom up all the way and you won't start seeing stars in the background. And I have no doubt the same also holds true for Venus. It's a long time into the game before you can do a 180 to the dark half of the sky and see things beginning to sparkle through.
Tonight looks like a scrub, tomorrow through Thursday looking excellent to real good.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Monday evening was an unambiguous scrub, yesterday was totally clear and warm, the evening was as primo as can be gotten but that also translates to substantial and rapid cooling.
Was on station - minus Geese again - by 17:00, set up shortly thereafter, Dad minus Kids and Dog showed shortly after. Got Jupiter with tons of daylight left about 17:18 - probably within a minute or so of it becoming doable. Locked on, gave it to Dad, started working on Saturn.
Soon came to the conclusion that Sunday evening's Saturn would be the last time anybody from this neck of the Solar System would be getting it until a fair bit into March after it finishes going around behind the Sun. It would've been doable minus the haze but the haze can't get any thinner than it was and the Northern Hemisphere Sun is gaining ground fast.
In the same vein Sunday evening's marginal Ganymede was the last time we'll be seeing a Jupiter moon until maybe late February.
Soon blundered into Mercury. It had moved up to a position downwind of Jupiter. The Mercury-Jupiter relationship looked a lot like the Jupiter-Saturn relationship had maybe a week prior. I centerpunched Mercury and watched it doing its rainbow trick. Handed off to Dad and he was seeing same and came up with the same hypothesis I had. I worked on it until I'd satisfied myself that I'd seen it as a disk.
Dad split, I stayed to keep my planets company for a while. With very little light left I got in the little tree crown area lined up with the right half of my gunsight road a big lump that looked like it had just flown in to roost and was settling down. Thought it was a Redtail initially but soon shifted to Eagle - an adult with a gun to my head. And there was a similar sized and proportioned lump close to the right and a wee bit lower that could've been another but the pattern of limbs and branches was such that I couldn't be sure of anything. But I'll get another shot in better light- almost certainly on this evening's outing - and confirm one way or another. And if it turns out to have been a bird that will confirm beyond any doubt that I was hitting Eagle.
And if that's the case I wonder if those birds have had anything to do with the Geese deciding to overnight elsewhere. Probably not though. I:
- have never heard of these birds hunting after dark
- know to a dead certainty that they'd never roosted in this particular location during any of my previous relevant missions
- wouldn't have missed them if they'd been roosting in any other relevant location
Eventually lost Mercury while playing with Jupiter, stayed with Jupiter until it was a fair bit down into the trees, capped at 17:56.
The really spectacular stuff has become total history but it's still kinda fun going out, looking around, trying to nail Jupiter at first gleam. And these are great equipment practice exercises. I fancy I'm getting pretty good - or at least a lot better - at running these drills.
Coming two evenings looking good.
Was on station - minus Geese again - by 17:00, set up shortly thereafter, Dad minus Kids and Dog showed shortly after. Got Jupiter with tons of daylight left about 17:18 - probably within a minute or so of it becoming doable. Locked on, gave it to Dad, started working on Saturn.
Soon came to the conclusion that Sunday evening's Saturn would be the last time anybody from this neck of the Solar System would be getting it until a fair bit into March after it finishes going around behind the Sun. It would've been doable minus the haze but the haze can't get any thinner than it was and the Northern Hemisphere Sun is gaining ground fast.
In the same vein Sunday evening's marginal Ganymede was the last time we'll be seeing a Jupiter moon until maybe late February.
Soon blundered into Mercury. It had moved up to a position downwind of Jupiter. The Mercury-Jupiter relationship looked a lot like the Jupiter-Saturn relationship had maybe a week prior. I centerpunched Mercury and watched it doing its rainbow trick. Handed off to Dad and he was seeing same and came up with the same hypothesis I had. I worked on it until I'd satisfied myself that I'd seen it as a disk.
Dad split, I stayed to keep my planets company for a while. With very little light left I got in the little tree crown area lined up with the right half of my gunsight road a big lump that looked like it had just flown in to roost and was settling down. Thought it was a Redtail initially but soon shifted to Eagle - an adult with a gun to my head. And there was a similar sized and proportioned lump close to the right and a wee bit lower that could've been another but the pattern of limbs and branches was such that I couldn't be sure of anything. But I'll get another shot in better light- almost certainly on this evening's outing - and confirm one way or another. And if it turns out to have been a bird that will confirm beyond any doubt that I was hitting Eagle.
And if that's the case I wonder if those birds have had anything to do with the Geese deciding to overnight elsewhere. Probably not though. I:
- have never heard of these birds hunting after dark
- know to a dead certainty that they'd never roosted in this particular location during any of my previous relevant missions
- wouldn't have missed them if they'd been roosting in any other relevant location
Eventually lost Mercury while playing with Jupiter, stayed with Jupiter until it was a fair bit down into the trees, capped at 17:56.
The really spectacular stuff has become total history but it's still kinda fun going out, looking around, trying to nail Jupiter at first gleam. And these are great equipment practice exercises. I fancy I'm getting pretty good - or at least a lot better - at running these drills.
Coming two evenings looking good.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Got on station a minute or two before 17:00, Sun was still a full disk through the trees, set time was 17:07. Sky was good but a bit south of the previous night's quality with respect to horizon haze.
Set up the scope, hit my Eagle tree, convinced myself that my mystery lump was on add limbs pattern. Scanned around the fields and a small gathering of Geese grazing silently. Realized I might well have missed them or something similar the previous.
While still pretty hopelessly light I scanned for Jupiter and Mercury with both binocular and scope, started thinking that the former had finally and permanently been overwhelmed by higher sun and haze.
With the scope went back down into Eagle tree where the light was no longer penetrating very well. Wait a minute... That lump wasn't there before. Almost immediately the lump started spreading its wings and exited glass right but I couldn't track him with the scope and couldn't pick him up again with the binocular. But Eagle remains my bet.
At maybe 17:18 blundered into Jupiter - still doing fine and a fair bit above the major haze. Shortly thereafter hit Mercury - a substantial bit downwind and way high, blazing, running through the spectrum. But I was never able to get either one of them unaided.
Jupiter again was able to keep punching through the haze. Followed it down through the high thin layer of canopy and capped at 17:56 with plenty of Mercury left.
When I was hauling back to the car Dad was rolling into the neighborhood and stopped for a status report. Told him that Jupiter was still doing surprising well but that the view was no longer anything to write home about - and that I'd continue following it anyway mostly out of curiosity about how long I'd be able to. Also that I'd keep an eye on the charts for future cool stuff but that a bird scope with a 48 degree angled eyepiece ain't much fun to use for targets much higher than 45.
He took my number and rolled, I dumped my gear and walked back to station with the glasses the see if there was anything left of Mercury but came up empty. 18:13 set time (without the trees and terrain rise). Nice look at Orion in the other direction.
Outlook good for this evening, looking like and hoping for a scrub the next.
Set up the scope, hit my Eagle tree, convinced myself that my mystery lump was on add limbs pattern. Scanned around the fields and a small gathering of Geese grazing silently. Realized I might well have missed them or something similar the previous.
While still pretty hopelessly light I scanned for Jupiter and Mercury with both binocular and scope, started thinking that the former had finally and permanently been overwhelmed by higher sun and haze.
With the scope went back down into Eagle tree where the light was no longer penetrating very well. Wait a minute... That lump wasn't there before. Almost immediately the lump started spreading its wings and exited glass right but I couldn't track him with the scope and couldn't pick him up again with the binocular. But Eagle remains my bet.
At maybe 17:18 blundered into Jupiter - still doing fine and a fair bit above the major haze. Shortly thereafter hit Mercury - a substantial bit downwind and way high, blazing, running through the spectrum. But I was never able to get either one of them unaided.
Jupiter again was able to keep punching through the haze. Followed it down through the high thin layer of canopy and capped at 17:56 with plenty of Mercury left.
When I was hauling back to the car Dad was rolling into the neighborhood and stopped for a status report. Told him that Jupiter was still doing surprising well but that the view was no longer anything to write home about - and that I'd continue following it anyway mostly out of curiosity about how long I'd be able to. Also that I'd keep an eye on the charts for future cool stuff but that a bird scope with a 48 degree angled eyepiece ain't much fun to use for targets much higher than 45.
He took my number and rolled, I dumped my gear and walked back to station with the glasses the see if there was anything left of Mercury but came up empty. 18:13 set time (without the trees and terrain rise). Nice look at Orion in the other direction.
Outlook good for this evening, looking like and hoping for a scrub the next.
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Clear (good) warm (not so good for a viewing forecast) day, arrived on site right after 17:07. More red haze plus lotsa serious cloud streaking along a great expanse of my horizon. But I was pretty confident I'd be able to score in the gaps. Surface air was pretty dead.
No parked Geese in my fields but tons of airborne traffic - almost constantly for a good while. Eagle tree was empty. Turkey Vulture came through low under power carrying something stringy about a foot and a half long.
The Moon had gone gone, new, invisible on Wednesday and I soon and unexpectedly caught it as its first visible crescent sliver way up and to the left on my planets path, sliver aimed at where the Sun had just slanted down through my notch. Hit it with the scope and it was really beautiful. Sky up at that level was still pretty light and blue and there was no trace of the disk beyond the sliver. It was blazing sunlit cratered sliver then normal blue sky immediately downwind. But I knew that as things got darker I'd soon see the full disk lit by earthshine.
Very shortly thereafter picked up Mercury straight upwind on the path about a scope and a half or two. Another check of the Eagle tree revealed that a pair had materialized and they were still moving around a little getting settled in. And picked up Jupiter low in clear sky in the notch to the left.
So three celestial targets and I started cycling through them. Soon got the Moon's disk and a wondered if it would - or, under ideal conditions, could - be possible to get terrain in the earthshine-only area. Didn't happen for me though. Jupiter went down in the trees under the Eagles (despite not being observable at this time - according to my site). Mercury kept cutting through the clouding getting in the way.
Thought it would be cool to track Mercury down into the trees below the Eagles and did so. It passed behind the trunk about 25 feet below them. Moon was low and getting fuzzed a wee bit. Capped at 17:56 - pleasantly not chilled to the bone.
Got a Fox - highly probably Red - blasting across in front of me while I was heading back up the home road.
Red sky this morning, tonight's gonna be a wash, tomorrow looks real iffy.
Just found a really cool and useful resource I really wish I'd started looking for a month and a half ago:
http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/
Night Sky Map & Planets Visible Tonight
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50837461953_122be1c57a_o.png
I could spend zillions of hours playing with that toy. In the reasonably near future though it should prove really useful in helping me bag early night versions of Venus, Mars, Uranus, hopefully Neptune at comfortable heights over my Pastures site's SW horizon.
No parked Geese in my fields but tons of airborne traffic - almost constantly for a good while. Eagle tree was empty. Turkey Vulture came through low under power carrying something stringy about a foot and a half long.
The Moon had gone gone, new, invisible on Wednesday and I soon and unexpectedly caught it as its first visible crescent sliver way up and to the left on my planets path, sliver aimed at where the Sun had just slanted down through my notch. Hit it with the scope and it was really beautiful. Sky up at that level was still pretty light and blue and there was no trace of the disk beyond the sliver. It was blazing sunlit cratered sliver then normal blue sky immediately downwind. But I knew that as things got darker I'd soon see the full disk lit by earthshine.
Very shortly thereafter picked up Mercury straight upwind on the path about a scope and a half or two. Another check of the Eagle tree revealed that a pair had materialized and they were still moving around a little getting settled in. And picked up Jupiter low in clear sky in the notch to the left.
So three celestial targets and I started cycling through them. Soon got the Moon's disk and a wondered if it would - or, under ideal conditions, could - be possible to get terrain in the earthshine-only area. Didn't happen for me though. Jupiter went down in the trees under the Eagles (despite not being observable at this time - according to my site). Mercury kept cutting through the clouding getting in the way.
Thought it would be cool to track Mercury down into the trees below the Eagles and did so. It passed behind the trunk about 25 feet below them. Moon was low and getting fuzzed a wee bit. Capped at 17:56 - pleasantly not chilled to the bone.
Got a Fox - highly probably Red - blasting across in front of me while I was heading back up the home road.
Red sky this morning, tonight's gonna be a wash, tomorrow looks real iffy.
Just found a really cool and useful resource I really wish I'd started looking for a month and a half ago:
http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/
Night Sky Map & Planets Visible Tonight
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50837461953_122be1c57a_o.png
I could spend zillions of hours playing with that toy. In the reasonably near future though it should prove really useful in helping me bag early night versions of Venus, Mars, Uranus, hopefully Neptune at comfortable heights over my Pastures site's SW horizon.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
2021/01/15-16-17 were all total scrubs. Much needed break.
Sunset last evening was 17:11, got on station a bit after 17:30. Very cold and dry with a horizon head and shoulders better than anything previous but a few smallish, opaque, sharply defined clouds around. Surface wind probably wasn't up into double digits but the windchill effect was still pretty brutal.
When I started scanning it was still too light for planets but I bumped into a stationary Red Fox aimed straight at me maybe 150 yards out on my gunsight road. He had to have seen me moving but shortly started/continued a trot straight toward me, cut under the fence to my left, cut back under a wee bit beyond me. I had to rotate a bit to stay on him and at that point he poured on some speed, crossed Cecil, headed north on the front lawns.
No Eagles in the Eagle tree, no Geese parked and I don't recall hearing or seeing any airborne.
Got Mercury pretty high pretty quick and scanned for Jupiter. When I checked its position on the iPhone it was very slightly below the theoretical horizon - and substantially below my real world one. It's totally ceased being doable.
I checked Mercury for the color show - figuring that with it being that high and the air being that stable there wouldn't be any. Confirmed.
The Moon was five days old and very high - had to do some major reconfiguration to hit it. But I got a comfortable view with some cool terrain and shadows. Made a couple half assed efforts for Mars and Uranus and quickly threw in the towel.
My Dad previous customer, whom I now realize was actually GrandDad, had wanted to rendezvous with the kids with me on Sunday evening to get a shot at the Orion Nebula - about which I knew nothing. But Sunday evening was a total wash.
Plan B... He wanted to rendezvous with me that last evening at 19:30 maybe with a friend or two to do the Orion Nebula. I'd done my homework and turned around to see if it would be doable. Orion was starting to blaze through, I was able to lock onto the Belt and work down the Sword until I got a little stars cluster in some light mist. Pretty sure I scored.
Swung back around to Mercury which was low and quite visible unaided. Hit it with the scope to see if I'd get colors with the extra atmosphere and got colors.
Then clouds started wiping things out as I was nearing death from hypothermia. I was staggering while getting broken down, packed up, loaded. Got home about 18:30 hoping I'd be able to thaw out sufficiently in the hour I had before the dedicated Orion Nebula mission rendezvous. He called, said he'd just seen Orion get totaled by the clouds, declared a scrub. (Thank you God.) Gave him the report on the relevant portion of my mission. We'll keep an eye on things and reschedule.
The 2021/01/17 Capital newspaper (the one that made national news getting shot up on 2018/06/28) published an article on 2021 astronomical highlights. Recommended:
http://in-the-sky.org/
http://www.timeanddate.com/
and only those two as references - same two I'd previously referenced here.
Sunset last evening was 17:11, got on station a bit after 17:30. Very cold and dry with a horizon head and shoulders better than anything previous but a few smallish, opaque, sharply defined clouds around. Surface wind probably wasn't up into double digits but the windchill effect was still pretty brutal.
When I started scanning it was still too light for planets but I bumped into a stationary Red Fox aimed straight at me maybe 150 yards out on my gunsight road. He had to have seen me moving but shortly started/continued a trot straight toward me, cut under the fence to my left, cut back under a wee bit beyond me. I had to rotate a bit to stay on him and at that point he poured on some speed, crossed Cecil, headed north on the front lawns.
No Eagles in the Eagle tree, no Geese parked and I don't recall hearing or seeing any airborne.
Got Mercury pretty high pretty quick and scanned for Jupiter. When I checked its position on the iPhone it was very slightly below the theoretical horizon - and substantially below my real world one. It's totally ceased being doable.
I checked Mercury for the color show - figuring that with it being that high and the air being that stable there wouldn't be any. Confirmed.
The Moon was five days old and very high - had to do some major reconfiguration to hit it. But I got a comfortable view with some cool terrain and shadows. Made a couple half assed efforts for Mars and Uranus and quickly threw in the towel.
My Dad previous customer, whom I now realize was actually GrandDad, had wanted to rendezvous with the kids with me on Sunday evening to get a shot at the Orion Nebula - about which I knew nothing. But Sunday evening was a total wash.
Plan B... He wanted to rendezvous with me that last evening at 19:30 maybe with a friend or two to do the Orion Nebula. I'd done my homework and turned around to see if it would be doable. Orion was starting to blaze through, I was able to lock onto the Belt and work down the Sword until I got a little stars cluster in some light mist. Pretty sure I scored.
Swung back around to Mercury which was low and quite visible unaided. Hit it with the scope to see if I'd get colors with the extra atmosphere and got colors.
Then clouds started wiping things out as I was nearing death from hypothermia. I was staggering while getting broken down, packed up, loaded. Got home about 18:30 hoping I'd be able to thaw out sufficiently in the hour I had before the dedicated Orion Nebula mission rendezvous. He called, said he'd just seen Orion get totaled by the clouds, declared a scrub. (Thank you God.) Gave him the report on the relevant portion of my mission. We'll keep an eye on things and reschedule.
The 2021/01/17 Capital newspaper (the one that made national news getting shot up on 2018/06/28) published an article on 2021 astronomical highlights. Recommended:
http://in-the-sky.org/
http://www.timeanddate.com/
and only those two as references - same two I'd previously referenced here.