Waning Crescent Moon April 4, 2013

7:09 AM CDT April 3, 2013 (12:09 UT). 8″ reflector telescope, 25mm eyepiece, LG VX8360 cell phone camera. Click to enlarge.

Don’t forget to look for Comet Pan-STARRS while it’s close in our sky to the Andromeda Galaxy!

Comet Pan-STARRS Offers M31 Photo Op (Sky and Telescope)

Spaceweather.com Realtime Image Gallery of Comet Pan-STARRS

Waning Crescent Moon April 3, 2013, with Lunar 100 #5: Copernicus; Saturn Update; and Comet Pan-STARRS Report

6:41 AM CDT April 3, 2013 (11:41 UT), 8″ reflector telescope with 25mm eyepiece.

The splendid crater Copernicus is Number 5 in Charles A. Woods’ Lunar 100 and can be easily seen in the photo above, and even more prominently in the upper center of this closeup from October 19, 2011, at 7:49 AM CDT (12:49 UT):

8″ reflector telescope, 25mm eyepiece, 2x Barlow.

It is a favorable time to view Saturn, as it is approaching opposition on April 28, at which time it will make its closest approach to Earth for this year. Here’s an update:

	5:56 AM CDT April 3, 2013 (10:56 UT) Angular diameter 18.57 arc seconds Distance from Earth 828,198,000 miles (1,332,855,000 km)
	6:45 AM CST February 21, 2013 (12:45 UT) Angular diameter 17.60 arc seconds Distance from Earth 873,809,000 miles (1,406,259,000 km)
	7:01 AM CST November 20, 2012 (13:01 UT) Angular diameter 15.49 arc seconds Distance from Earth 992,918,000 miles (1,598,000,000 km)
	11:42 PM CDT June 7, 2012 (04:42 UT June 8, 2012) Angular diameter 18.15 arc seconds Distance from Earth 847,415,000 miles (1,363,782,000 km)
	4:38 AM CDT April 12, 2012 (09:38 UT) Angular diameter 18.97 arc seconds Distance from Earth 810,707,000 miles (1,304,706,000 km)
	6:13 AM CST January 8, 2012 (12:13 UT) Angular diameter 16.82 arc seconds Distance from Earth 913,348,000 miles (1,471,501,000 km) 25mm eyepiece with 2x Barlow, scaled to match the others
	3:23 AM CDT April 14, 2011 (08:23 UT) Angular diameter 18.97 arc seconds Distance from Earth 810,570,000 miles (1,304,487,000 km)

Last but not least, I’m happy to report that on Sunday evening I made a clear sighting of Comet Pan-STARRS, which this week is passing right by the Andromeda Galaxy, so don’t miss it, because it’s one of the best times available to use a major astronomical “landmark” to find the comet! I don’t expect to post any pictures, as the comet is too faint for my modest photo equipment. but Nathan P. Hoffman succeeded in capturing it here, and a great place to watch for the latest amateur photos is www.spaceweather.com/.

Almost forgot – my photos are taken with an LG VX8360 cell phone camera, as usual. Gotta love the internet … a guy with no money can aim his pocket camera into a weathered old telescope and turn it into an astronomy site …

Waning Gibbous Moon (almost last quarter) April 2, 2013; Lunar 100 #4: Apennines; Christ is Risen!

Hello, folks, I’m happy to report that I still live on this planet!

The Moon hangs peacefully in the southern sky this beautiful clear morning. 7:40 AM CDT (12:40 UT) April 2, 2013, 60mm refractor, 25mm eyepiece.

I’m now resuming my post series on Charles Woods’ “Lunar 100″. Number 4 on the list is the Lunar Apennine Mountains, or Montes Apenninus, which figure prominently in the lower central part of this photo, which I took on July 10, 2012, at 5:14 AM CDT (10:14 UT):

8″ reflector telescope, 25mm eyepiece, 2x Barlow. Both with LG VX8360 cell phone camera.

Towards the north end of the Apennine range is Mons Hadley, notable because an adjacent valley was the Apollo 15 lunar landing site.

Happy Easter, and blessings to those who have recently celebrated Passover! This is what Easter is all about:

Saturn Update for February 21, 2013, with bonus sundogs and snowy trees

This post concludes my longest period ever without posting! Been busy, & the winter has been cold and snowy. But the northern winter has its glories, and here are a couple:

Above: Light, fluffy, delicate snow on tree branches, February 16, 2013 at 10:22 AM.
Below: Sundogs shining through the trees at 9:04 AM on the bitterly cold morning of February 19.

It was slightly hazy this morning, but it was so much fun to get out to the telescope again and observe Saturn, I went with it anyway. Here’s a Saturn series, similar in format to my Venus phase updates, beginning with this morning and working back through a few of my best Saturn photos. Note how over time Saturn’s rings are “opening up” as viewed from Earth. Unless otherwise noted, these photos are with the 8″ reflector telescope, 17mm eyepiece, and 2x Barlow:

	6:45 AM CST February 21, 2013 (12:45 UT) Angular diameter 17.60 arc seconds Distance from Earth 873,809,000 miles (1,406,259,000 km)
	7:01 AM CST November 20, 2012 (13:01 UT) Angular diameter 15.49 arc seconds Distance from Earth 992,918,000 miles (1,598,000,000 km)
	11:42 PM CDT June 7, 2012 (04:42 UT June 8, 2012) Angular diameter 18.15 arc seconds Distance from Earth 847,415,000 miles (1,363,782,000 km)
	4:38 AM CDT April 12, 2012 (09:38 UT) Angular diameter 18.97 arc seconds Distance from Earth 810,707,000 miles (1,304,706,000 km)
	6:13 AM CST January 8, 2012 (12:13 UT) Angular diameter 16.82 arc seconds Distance from Earth 913,348,000 miles (1,471,501,000 km) 25mm eyepiece with 2x Barlow, scaled to match the others
	3:23 AM CDT April 14, 2011 (08:23 UT) Angular diameter 18.97 arc seconds Distance from Earth 810,570,000 miles (1,304,487,000 km)

Happy New Year! Waning Gibbous Moon January 3, 2013

It’s 2013, the Earth is still here (no, I’m not surprised), so is the Moon, and so am I! Time to begin another year of low-budget, high-enthusiasm cell phone astrophotography!

Above: 7:52 AM CST January 3, 2013 (13:52 UT)
Below: 7:55 AM (13:55 UT), with 2x Barlow

Below: 5:39 AM CST December 31, 2012 (11:39 UT)

8″ reflector telescope, 25mm eyepiece, LG VX8360 cell phone camera. Click to enlarge.

The Lunar 100, #3: Mare/Highland Dichotomy

I’m blogging through Charles A. Wood’s The Lunar 100.

Above: The north central part of the Moon photographed at 5:41 AM CST November 17, 2011 (11:41 UT). 8″ reflector telescope with 17mm eyepiece, 2x Barlow, LG VX8360 cell phone camera. Click to enlarge.

Almost everyone has seen the contrast between the darker and lighter portions of the Moon’s face. In our culture we see the “Man in the Moon,” and the human imagination has seen many other pictures and patterns in the Moon – the technical term for this is Lunar pareidolia.

In the photo above it’s evident that the high, mountainous terrain on the Moon tends to be lighter in color than the lower, smoother portions. These darker, smooth plains are called maria, which isn’t the name Maria, but rather is plural for mare (pronounced “mar-eh”), the Latin word for sea. Early modern astronomers using the first telescopes mistook these flat plains for actual seas, hence the name. The lunar maria are broad plains of lava which has long since cooled down, and are darker because of their iron-rich composition.

So the lunar maria aren’t true seas, but we now know of an actual sea on a different moon, Saturn’s largest Moon Titan, home of a sea of liquid hydrocarbons called Kraken Mare, possibly about the same size as Earth’s Caspian Sea.

My alternative frame story for The Hobbit

The long-awaited movie has finally arrived, namely The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and though I’ve seen some mixed reviews, it appears to be a box office smash, just as I expected. I haven’t seen it yet – my odd schedule tends to get in the way, but of course I’ll be looking for my opportunity. Meanwhile, in celebration of this new visit to Middle-Earth, I thought I might share my own rare venture into fan fiction.

From what I’ve read, as well as from the preview trailer below, it appears that the new Hobbit film series uses, as a frame story, Bilbo telling his story to Frodo. This is not unexpected, and I’m sure it proves most suitable.

But my imagination has taken me in a slightly different direction, in which the narrator is Gimli the dwarf, who happens to know Bilbo’s book very well, but has been known to take off from it in his own direction.

This is a story about a story written for children, told to children, a tale of heroes, so I offer it in memory of the slain children and fallen heroes of Sandy Hook.

It is a pleasant spring day in the court of Gondor, as King Elessar, Queen Arwen, and their three young children are enjoying a visit from old friends Legolas and Gimli. As usual for these visits, the grown-ups are conversing on the bench next to the garden gate as the children sit cross-legged before them, listening to Gimli telling dwarf stories. Today there’s a bit of extra excitement in the air, as more company is soon expected, namely the Mayor of the Shire, Sam Gamgee, along with his wife Rosie and their own children.

The royal children of Gondor don’t remember meeting Hobbits before, as Eldarion and his sisters are too young to remember the last time that the Gamgees came for a visit, so after hearing one tale of dwarf adventures, they beg, “Tell us a hobbit story!” “Yes, we want to hear a hobbit story, Uncle Gimli!”

“Oh, but don’t you want to hear more of the daring exploits of the Dwarves?” “We want to hear a hobbit story!” they insisted. “Oh, all right then, I think I do know a hobbit story” he grumbled, but in fact Gimli had planned this all along, and had a special story up his sleeve, a true story involving one hobbit and a whole company of dwarves.

“Be sure to get it right, now!” Legolas goaded Gimli with a knowing grin. He had heard Gimli tell this same story to a group of young elves, and though Gimli had a remarkable recall of Bilbo’s book, he tended to expand and slightly exaggerate his own father’s role in the adventure, so much so that several of the elf children had thought afterwards that the leader of the dwarf company was Gloin rather than Thorin Oakenshield. “Yes, yes, of course I’ll get it right! Well then, where shall I begin?” he muttered in feigned puzzlement. He paused for his audience to hush down and lean in closer, and the children noticed that the grown-ups were also hushing and listening, a little more than usual.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole … it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.” Gimli enunciated each word in the description of the hobbit hole with an enthusiastic verve that kept the children giggling, and even as he entertained the kids, he kept on making eye contact with Legolas as if to say, Notice how well I know Bilbo’s book word for word, eh? Legolas got the message and chuckled.

“… This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins,” Gimli continued, and as the King of Gondor sat on the bench listening to Gimli, he sighed when he heard the name “Baggins” and closed his eyes, recalling Bilbo, remembering Frodo. Aragorn (as many still knew him) and Arwen never intended to hide anything from their children, of course, and the day would come when they would know all about the War of the Ring. But out of sheer weight of emotion the royal parents hadn’t yet told them anything about this story. Yes, Aragorn thought to himself, the time has come on this pleasant day for our children to know this story, and to come to understand the simple wisdom and great courage of the small people who won for us this freedom and happiness. And yes, I’m glad that Gimli is here to tell the tale.

Eldarion saw it happen. He saw his father close his eyes and sigh deeply at the sound of the name “Baggins,” and all at once he felt several new, unexpected, and very grown-up things. First of all, he had heard the name Baggins a year or two before, and laughed. It had then struck him as funny that “bag” might be part of someone’s name, and when he heard that there were even hobbits named Sackville-Baggins, he laughed even harder. But now he realized for the first time that someone named Baggins might, in fact, be a very important person, and it got his attention all the more. Furthermore, Eldarion realized at once that the story Gimli was now telling was no ordinary story, but the beginning of possibly the most important story he had ever heard. And there was something more: looking at his father, he saw him for the first time not as Daddy, but as a man called Strider. Of course he already knew that some had nicknamed his father Strider, and Daddy seemed to like that nickname. But all at once he understood that nickname very literally, and saw him not just as father and king but as a traveler on a long, hard road, and somehow this Baggins was a fellow traveler on the same road. And the thought occurred to young Eldarion that hearing this story of Mr. Baggins was somehow his own first step on the long journey. Words to a song came to him, a song which he had heard his father and mother sing; “The road goes ever on and on …” It was a little scary, perceiving his father as a sort of a brother rather than as Daddy, but he liked the feeling.

This flood of new, grown-up feelings distracted Eldarion from the story for a moment. He looked up again at his father and saw him looking straight back at him. He feared for a moment that he was in trouble, but in fact Strider was looking back at his son with a deep, serene smile, eyes filled with love, saying nothing. They held eye contact for a moment, and Eldarion got the distinct impression that his father knew about everything he’d just experienced, and that he approved; they shared this secret together, father and son. He looked toward his mother, who also was looking at him with a bright smile, but a slightly more parentally directive one. She averted her eyes in Gimli’s direction as if to say, listen now to the story. Instantly Eldarion was back on track with the story and wasn’t distracted again till it was done, especially after he heard Gimli drop another name which he knew he had heard before:

“Gandalf came by. Gandalf! …”