Considering it was a rather dank and gloomy day it was a bit surprising to see the Moon shining so brightly through the skylight in the attic early this evening. I offer this photo as proof that, first, my camera’s long zoom still works reasonably well and that, second, the windows of our skylights are not quite as covered in cack as I thought they were: this is definitely taken through glass.
Clear skies are not always a feature of the time of year, so let’s take the chance to photograph this impending conjunction tonight, although surely the Moon is going to move even closer (apparently, anyway) to Venus before the weekend. A fleeting contrail decides to butt its oar in, too.
This one was a matter of looking out of the window at just the right time, and having clouds at just the right layers of opacity. It’s not often we get a visual sense of the sun as being spherical, but this gets close, I think.
Mondays have hardly been the most exciting days recently, even by present standards. But while, in no way, a decent photograph aesthetically, this is at least interesting. What you see here are Jupiter (the brighter one) and Saturn setting over Hebden Bridge, seen from my home. I did not realise this until today but apparently these planets are almost due to touch (from our perspective) on 21st December; the closest apparent conjunction since 1623. One to look out for, if you have any interest in astronomy.
This is the first time I have knowingly had Saturn in my viewfinder, and seeing as I had managed in the past to get a decent shot of Jupiter and its moons with my camera I did try for the rings. No joy — though the blurry disc I did get was, definitely, squashed-looking.
“But how shall I know the day of my birth in future years, O Holy Seer of Signs?”
“Drew, stand beside the river and look for the day on which the sun sets between the two pillars. Thus shall you know it.”
I’m 51 today. This is now the tenth year of the blog. And life goes on, one day at a time.
In some ways, of course, this may be the dullest picture I have ever posted on here. But I still think it’s a fine thing that my new camera [*] makes its debut by crossing interplanetary space. And without a tripod, too; to prove the steadiness of my hand and that the Red Planet isn’t just an out-of-focus star, note Psi Capricornus (apparently) just to the left.
[*] A Canon Power Shot SX60.
It’s not quite 3pm here but considering this is what I came several thousand miles to see: I think we’re done with photography for the day, don’t you?
It was back in May 2013 that I saw the annular eclipse in north Queensland, and interesting as that was, it does not really approach the awesome nature of totality; the beauty of the corona and the ‘Baily’s beads’, light shining through valleys on the Moon’s edge, which I just about manage to capture here. And as I said about the Australian one — do you realise we might be one of the few planets in the whole universe to be able to see something like this, thanks to the coincidence that the Moon and Sun are the same apparent size in the sky? Lucky us. If you ever get the chance to see one — my advice is, take it.
Four weeks ago everyone was going on about the ‘Supermoon’, nearest for 70 years or whatever-it-was…. Well, the moon can’t have moved that far back from Earth in the span of the last orbit, so I guess it is still pretty close. Looks it, anyway. Taken from Manchester Victoria station as I awaited the train home this evening.
Well aware that this ain’t gonna win any astrophotography contests — its technical defects epitomised by the fact that the moon is (you can easily check) still nine days from full, but the crescent hasn’t come out here. But having spent the whole day indoors this really was a slow day for material, and with Orion striding over the town tonight in defiance of the usual light pollution I thought I would give it a go at making it the first recognisable constellation to appear on the blog.
I had a really nice, artistic shot of some alley in Manchester city centre lined up as today’s choice. It was a beautiful day, with great light throughout.
But…. this is JUPITER. And Io, and Europa, and (I am taking a stab at this) Ganymede. And there are colours (look how Ganymede to the right is whiter than the rest.) With an ordinary digital camera. Pictured from Yorkshire. It’s awesome.
Being 42 