Lucky, lucky.
The eclipse was prettiest as it began, golden and low to the horizon:
Overexposed on the idiot iPhone held up to an eyepiece, but it caught the earthshine:
Better camera, better image; some time near maximum:
The last shot of the night, as the umbra moved off the disc:
(Three taken through a reflecting telescope, so the images are flipped).
lxxvi : Medicate
And while you are about it, you might as well try to see a total lunar eclipse, wearing all your outdoor clothes indoors, in deference to the huge viral and bacterial load.
The penumbral phase was indiscernible, the moon’s brightness varying too much with the passing clouds. Once the umbra began to bite the edge of the disc, however, it was possible to see the shadow line move, and, in a few better moments, the coppery red of the shaded segment shone out.
It’s not the same through glass, and it’s not the same through clouds, but a better way to pass a small hour than mere medication.
The moon was nearly full last night; just enough shadowed terminator to reveal some craters.
Considering that the photos were taken by a phone being held up in the vague direction of a cheap refractor, they weren’t too bad. I couldn’t capture a complete moon image through the 25mm eyepiece, because the phone couldn’t cope with the glare. The shorter eyepiece gives a less bright segment that the camera could manage, but the sweet spot in the 10mm eyepiece is a bit limited.
Pythagoras is the one with the peak; Sinus Iridium and Plato show up well given that they have no defining shadows:
Inghirami is a good name for a crater (its floor in shadow and tucked in behind Schickard) and I don’t think I have ever identified it before. Grimaldi and Hevelius are further north. Again, without shadows I am surprised that Tycho wasn’t just one flat glare:
The seeing was terrible: darkness barely falls, and the sky is thick with heat, cloud and muck. Nonetheless the new refractor let me peer out.
First there was Venus, dropping into the trees but showing a fattish phase; then Jupiter, which graciously allowed me to watch Europa being occulted behind it; then Saturn, rings wide open, with Titan just visible; and at last Mars, almost at opposition but so low it was just a big orange fuzzball.
I’ve seen them all better; but this is a moment to enjoy seeing them at all.
After significant wrestling with rugs, curtains, windows, tables, books, boxes, bargains, shoes, and incoming parcels, we got to the serious stuff.
This included corporate creativity in order to adjust the fascinator with two pairs of heavy duty pliers and superglue (a treasurable experience)
and discovering that we female rellies from far-flung places had instinctively colour-co-ordinated ourselves.
The view from the back of the portaloos was the best I have ever seen from a lavatory (the other aspects were good too) and strop didn’t seem to break out until later. All good.
Meantime, writing a level 7 assignment with the other foot … yes, that worked. Writing is agony, but here is a keeper (especially since I discovered that St Menas may have won the Battle of El Alamein):
It was lonely without the sky so in a heavily symbolic act … I may have overbought. It came today,
and I have been using the cathedral spire to align the red dot finder. Can’t see the spire? The scope can. In fact it can count each red warning light and the knobs on the cross on top.
But can it see anything else? Naturally, the moon is rising behind a band of high cloud and has turned itself into a gigantic fuzzball. Isn’t astronomy wonderful?
… disinclining me to appreciate small things as much as usual. Here, however, I may mention two pleasures of the senses:
A home-made swiss roll bulging with summer fruits, raspberry preserve, and double cream – a potent consolation in its way;
and the Falcon Heavy launch (hardly small, but very brief). My rational part has its doubts about the value of the programme, but seeing the two side boosters settling out of the sky on their tails was pure magic. Pity they lost the core, but perhaps a good thing to keep down corporate hubris.
Now I’m going to watch those boosters separate and land again (for the eleventh time or so). Oh the improbability of it.
Probably the stars have been there all along, but time has lapsed since we visited. At sunset I waited impatiently in the porch, out of the wind, until they began to pop in the deepening blue. I watched the Summer Triangle down into the west as if for the last time. Orion was rising in the east, holding open the sky to let the cold air in.
At the first end: ugly lumps, and wet newspaper everywhere, but it’s invigorating to work up the beach clay from slop to gloop to squodge.
At the other end: fragments of apricot light coruscating through trees, becoming a broken arc, a distorted rectangle, finally a golden disc. Full moon.
It all started so promisingly.
The baby 5″ is quick to set up and I took a couple of snaps for the fun of it, before the sky was properly dark.
I even managed to catch a little of the earthshine, though it needed a time long enough to over-expose the lit crescent of the moon.
The 5″ was, however, not giving a good image of Jupiter, and I lugged out the 10″. Given that we’re talking astronomy here, no surprise that the clouds came up in a moment, and wiped the sky like a sponge across a blackboard. At this point everything began to go wrong, a maddening saga involving collimators, flat batteries, lost screws, and the impending disintegration of the whole primary mirror assembly on the 10″. And it wasn’t even April Fools yet. I secured the primary before sulking off to bed, but it’s going to be a vile job to realign everything.
This afternoon was bright but it was the mist in the downs which was making me happy.
Driving home, I could see four complicated sky layers, all apparently doing different things. By the time I could photograph, only two of the layers were obvious: the low grey layer which was the one sitting on the hills, moving quickly to the right, though there was almost no breeze at ground level; and the high white cumulus, drifting almost imperceptibly to the left.
Made me think of Jupiter all over again.
Or bedtime?
Because I didn’t have to get up at seven I woke at four. As I blearily tweaked the curtain, Jupiter glowed in a frosty sky, and I could hear it even when I tried to tuck back under the quilt: “You’ll be sorry if you don’t… you’re awake anyway … you’ll be sorry if you don’t.” Luckily the thermals were to hand in the darkness. And the essential fluffy feet.
It’s quite a while since I’ve been out at this barbarous hour. The Plough of course; Leo; Virgo arranged around the beacon of Jupiter; Hercules; Lyra rising. I fail to like Boötes, whereas my cockles always warm to Corona Borealis and Serpens Caput (as if they cared!), and Draco provokes tragicomic nostalgia. In the still air, each wave was audible, growling onto the remote beach, the seventh waves thundering and dumping with suppressed energy.
I took out the 5″, but it had decollimated itself so I could barely pick out the belts of Jupiter, though it was pleasant to see the four big moons in a row. So I stuck to eyeball and binocular, working to ‘see’ the squashed house of Cepheus, which for some reason my brain never identifies even when I know I’m looking straight at it. Cygnus came up in the east, and at last Aquila began to appear, and the whole summer triangle was absurdly simultaneous with the icy car and crunching grass. A shred of the waning moon rose at six, and through binoculars the earthshine was awesome.
One planet; one meteor; one satellite; the moon; and a thousand stars. As I came in I dropped the 5″ on its head, poor thing, and made it more woggly than ever. So now – if you can – collimate THAT.
Minutiae 