Pics From The Road

Observing Notes:
Only used the mounted digital camera for these pictures.

Orion is now coming over the eastern horizon at around 2-3AM. First noticed it coming over the horizon about 3 weeks ago early in the morning, just before sun-up.

Was able to get two of Jupiters moons without the aid of a telescope. That shows the differance between a dark sky, away from all the street lights and a non dark sky in the city.

27 Aug/10 Observing at Hartland, NB Moon and Jupiter

Videos From The Road

The top video was taken at St. Leonard, NB 27Aug/10 at 0130. It shows the Moon and Jupiter behind fast moving clouds.

The bottom video was taken at Hartland, NB 27 Aug/10 at 2230. It also shows the Moon and Jupiter. You will notice that the glare from the Moon is cut down from time to time during this video, that is because I placed a sunglass lense in front of the camera. It worked good for the moon but it competely blotted out Jupiter.

More Pics of Summertime Bending Trees

These pictures were taken on 26 Aug/10 near Ottawa, ON. There are stands of Poplar and White Birch that are bending over here and there along the highway and in the woods.

It is an interesting phenomena that is still a mystery to me. Wind, excess ice and snow are not factors.

Video of Asteroid Discoveries from 1980 to Present

This was taken from Spaceweather.com a very good website for interesting space happenings which features amature photographs of celestial and other sky related pictures. It is updated frequently.

This is a truly amazing video that gives the viewer an idea on just how many asteroids that are in our neighborhood.

Hopefully governments are investing in ways that will protect us, our children, and future generations from an eventual collision. The lessons learned from such an endeavour would surely be extremely valuable in our goal to explore farther out into space. No doubt, these new lessons would also help improve our lives here on earth, when you consider all the inventions(TV and microwave just to mention two) that have come from our efforts to explore space thus far.

Videos like this show that the human race is becoming aware of its surroundings, and gives hope for a great and extended future.

Path of Celestial Objects In The Night Sky

Observations: The three pictures below were taken just after sunset from top to bottom: 12,13 and 15 Aug/10 from Dummondville, QC, Ottawa, ON and Saint John, NB respectively.

When studied, they show how fast the Moon changes phases and location in the sky night after night.

Saturn and Mars did not become visible to the naked eye in Ottawa and did not show up in some of the pictures taken in Saint John, but they were visible to the naked eye and they showed up in the pictures when zoomed in on.

After observing all of the pictures that I have taken this summer of the western sky at sunset, these are my observations again looking west just after sunset day after day moving forward in time: New Moons start out low on the horizon and move up to the left. Venus and Mars are moving down to the left at different angles. Saturn and the background stars move down to the right.

Cresent Moon-Venus-Mars-Saturn Conjunction

Location: Drummondville, QC

Date Time: 12 August, 2010 from 2035-2050 local time

Weather: 25 Degrees Celsius, partly cloudy, almost no wind, humid.

Equipment: Kodak C190 EasyShare Digital Camera with tripod.

Report: In the pictures, Venus is the bright star with Mars above to the left and Saturn above to the right.

By the time Mars and Saturn became visible, the crescent Moon had almost set behind a farm house and some trees. This left an approximately 15 minute window to get a picture of this rare conjunction. When you consider that the weather has to cooperate, this truly was a rare viewing.

During this session at about 2045 hrs a shooting star/fire ball went overhead just out of the view of this conjunction. It sparkled and a light whooshing and crackling sound could be heard. The line it made across the sky could be traced straight to the constellation Perseus which would make this a part of the Persid Meteor shower that is now taking place.