Kitt Peak Kraziness!

Late May and early June in the Southwestern Desert... Hot and clear! Again, I apologize in not posting for nearly 2 months! I continue to lack inspiration! But the clear dark skies here in AZ truly inspire! I had a couple friends visit that had never been under a dark sky - so the need for outings descended!


My friend Karen from Chicago was down and didn't know what all the astronomy fuss was about, so I scheduled a trip to Kitt Peak National Observatory for one of their "Nightly Observing Programs" (NOPs). It is a pretty cool program (literally, a temperature relief with nearly 20 degree cooler temperatures than Tucson), that allows you to be among the research telescopes at the National Observatory 40 miles SW of Tucson. One drives their own car to the site after it normally closes to the public. After checking in the program, it starts about 90 minutes before sunset with an orientation and a box dinner. Then we head out to watch the always-enjoyable sunset. We had Charles leading the group, who gave a fantastic tour of all we could see, both locally on the mountain, and phenomena in the sky to watch for. That is him at the left with the setting sun in the background. A few moments later, we all watched spellbound for an appearance of the "Green Flash" as the last rays of the sun set below distant mountains. I'm pretty sure I saw it, but was a second or two early with the photo at right for a pure green!



Shortly after sunset, a glance to the east reveals one of the "often seen, but rarely noted" phenomena - the shadow of the earth rising into the sky! In the image at left with the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope (now closed due to defunding), the dark line above it is the rising shadow of the earth, topped by the pink sunset line of the "Belt of Venus", where the still-shining sunset is tinted pink by sunlight going through massive amounts of atmosphere - just like how our viewed sunset colors are seen. Charles continued his monolog of post-sunset items of interest, then descended back to the Visitor Center. There our group was split into 3 groups - the "Dark Sky Discovery Program" went off to their own 16" telescope for the evening. The remaining 45 folks in the NOP was divided in half, one group to the 20" scope, the other for their orientation to observing with planispheres and binoculars. That is our leader Robert at right, the lights in the VC now using red lights to preserve dark adaptation...


Even though taking night-time photos was discouraged, I did not get permission, but rather, turned down the screen brightness, and the Canon 6D does NOT have a built-in flash, so the effect on nearby large telescopes was nil... I set up on the Visitor Center patio with an old Nikon 16mm fisheye taking in a large swath of the VC and sky, as well as the people out using their planispheres. At left is a single exposure, 15 seconds long at ISO 3200 with the fisheye at F/2.8.  I took these a good portion of the evening, perhaps to someday make a time-lapse, but not today! At the left of the VC is the dome of the fine 20" telescope that we used for our observing a little later. Be sure to click the image and see if you can make out the major constellations in the northern sky in June. For your convenience, I've done the work and labeled the same photo at left...


I let the camera run unattended while we went to the telescope to observe. With the large group of people (23) and only an hour to observe, we only had time for 4 objects. It's always an issue in a dark dome with big crowd as queuing up is always an issue without clearly defined pathways... And with a big telescope and fully-dark skies, I had issues with some of those 4 objects - a double star? Really? And the Beehive open star cluster? With a 20"? Both Karen and I LOVED the view of the M13 Globular Cluster and rising Jupiter (disks of moons could be resolved, even at its low altitude!), but the decision not to show ANY of the spectacular galaxies in the springtime sky is unconscionable! Oh well... Some may remember I used to help run this program a few years back, so I've got stronger opinions than most...

With the large amount of time we had sitting in the dark dome, I got permission to step downstairs to relocate my camera to the elevated catwalk of the dome and took few shots showing the rising Milky way over the mountaintop - shown at left. Still with the Fisheye, this is a 25 second exposure, still at ISO 3200.  A piece of the 20" dome at upper left, and along the mountain profile is the 2.1 meter, the 50", the WIYN 36" and the WIYN 3.5 meter. The red streaks are from folks walking back to the VC from the rest rooms... Jupiter is the bright object leading the Milky Way across the sky.


With the end of observing, we moved back downstairs. I sent Karen in for final instructions from the NOP crew. I knew there were shopping opportunities, so I had a few minutes to continue some projects on the patio. One of my thoughts was to try to shoot the rising Milky Way in the "new" sundial (likely now 20 years old!). Shown at left in daytime, the "crystal ball" effect provides a wide field visible in the polished sphere. Unfortunately, it isn't optimum for my application as the projection screen normally receiving a spot of the sun for telling the time, blocks a good chunk of the sphere and the image it transfers. My best effort is shown at right... Still, I liked the sharp little image contained therein, and also loved the out-of-focus stars that reveals their colors more intensely than when in focus! I might have to make my own ball for a repeat!


Thusly inspired by the colors of out-of-focus stars, I purposely took a set of exposures both in-focus, then intentionally out. The rising constellation Scorpius seemed a suitable target, and these are both 2-frame vertical mosaics with a 50mm lens, each frame a combination of several exposures (stacked), 15 seconds each at F/2 to minimize trailing (no tracking device this night!). I love the details seen in such short exposures - the dark nebulae against clouds of Milky Way stars especially!

And while I love the exposure at left of sharp stars, I also love the defocused star images at right that more intently shows the star colors! When in focus, the star colors turn to white as they are mostly saturated in brightness. Defocused, they retain the true star colors. And of course, you know what you can derive from their colors - anyone??? Yes, you in the back - YES, you can tell their temperatures! Well, at least the blue ones are hotter than the yellow or white ones!



The last image taken was just barely seen, but looks much more impressive in the photo as levels adjustments can be made! The Milky Way was rising behind the solar telescope, partially diminished by the lights of Green Valley and Nogales. Pretty amazing what the 6D and 50mm lens can do in 15 seconds!

With that, the crowd was leaving, so packed up the tripod and camera and headed down the mountain, the first mile with headlights covered. Were back home by 12:30 with what I can now confirm were pretty nice images!




BUT! While tripod shots can be fun, Tracked shots are even more fun with the depth, details and colors they can record. I was looking for another opportunity to go photograph with a tracking mount. I've had an AstroTrac for a few years now (may no longer be available). While it seems fine with a 200mm and 300mm lenses, I've not really found the upper limit, so wanted to try the 500mm F/4 camera and lens on it. So 4 days after the above Kitt Peak trip, I returned to the Mountain, this time to a pullout to set up my own gear with friend Susan who claims to have never been under a dark sky. Well she got an eyeful as the Milky Way made an appearance. The 500mm seems to work well with the mount, though I think polar alignment is a bit dodgy! There was slight trailing, but acceptable if the sub-exposures were kept to 90 seconds or so. This required an ISO of 4,000 and shooting at F/5. My target with the 500 was a 3-frame mosaic of the dark cloud commonly called the Pipe Nebula. From a wide-field image, it looks like a smoking pipe with curling smoke rising to form the "Prancing Horse". Shown at left is the mosaic with about 2 hours of exposures with the 3 frames, flat fields and darks subtracted with Sequator and mosaic assembled in Photoshop.


Similarly, with the night winding down on a "school night", I pointed it to a popular field of Messier 8 and 20, the Lagoon and Triffid Nebula (bottom to top). Only 7 minutes of exposure, it is a nice field to shoot quickly before closing down for the night. Susan was impressed with the sky, and I found a new tracking mount easier to set up than the AP1200 that can handle the 500mm lens! So a useful night. Well, any night under clear, dark skies is worthwhile unless Mr. Murphy makes an appearance!

South Carolina State Museum (SCSM)!

The highlight of nearly any trip to Columbia, South Carolina has got to be a stop at the State Museum. My first time there in 1990, it was a newly-opened facility, open 2 years (1988) in a converted century-old textile mill. It is an amazing place, covering all aspects of SC history, the sciences, and one of my main interests, a new observatory with a century-old telescope! One of my last trips there, they had a major part of the museum under construction building the observatory seen above the roofline at left.

Immediately seen as you enter the building is the tripod upon which the telescope sits up on the 4th floor. Shown at right, most likely don't know what it is, but note that the tripod that insulates the telescopes from building vibrations is even incorporated into the new emblem of the SCSM - note the embroidered patch and name tag on the inset!

Just past the ticket desk is a store that sells everything South Carolina! Being that it was just before Christmas for my visit, there was lots of cutsie gifts for those that have everything - like the kitchen towels that say Jingle y'all and the like (Left).

There is lots of symbolism in the SC flag and it appears on most everything from flip flops to glasses, including the silver bowl shown at right... Carolinians take their history seriously and there is quite the history section in their books for sale. They continue to relive the "War of Northern Aggression", and the second largest section is likely cooking books! I asked one of the young sales clerks what I couldn't live without (I just wanted to hear her delightful southern-belle accent), and she steered me towards the chocolate-covered caramel popcorn. But while her accent was adorable, was able to turn down the treats!

Just across from the store in the entryway
was the "Palmetto Gate", featuring the craft of Philip Simmons, a blacksmith-turned-artist in the Charleston area. Wrought iron work like this is very popular, adding to the allure of older neighborhoods in that city. This work was custom designed for the museum by Simmons. It shows incredible craftsmanship and details in the gate highlights - details shown at right...




There were a couple of commissioned artworks from local artists - using some unusual media! Shown at left is the detail of a portrait by Molly B. Right - in bottle caps on wood! Only when you back up and see the whole piece do you see it is the scientist Albert Einstein!  This was made for a 2014 exhibit "Building a Universe".







With a rotating set of exhibits, there is always something new to see. In fact, on one out-of-the-way hallway, there was a wall filled with posters of the various exhibits over the 30 years of the museum. I think it was in that same hallway that I found some new displays using old photos showing the transformation to century-old textile mill to state-of-art museum...





But the main reason I was there was that it was a Tuesday, and on Tuesdays (weather permitting) the observatory was open for public viewing! It isn't often one gets to observe through a century-old 12" telescope from the classic Alvan Clark and Sons manufacturers! And unlike Lowell Observatory and their classic 24", where I asked to focus a fuzzy image and told "NO", these guys not only told me to focus, and gave me the controller to "drive around" the moon! At left our telescope operator lines up on a gibbous moon as twilight approaches.

A little later as it got darker, we all gravitated to an outer deck where an additional Dobsonian could be set up, as well as spot city lights of Columbia a couple miles to the east. Also as part of the observatory expansion was increased display area for the Bob Ariail antique Telescope collection. I alternated with touring the collection of Clark and other manufacturers from the 1700s and 1800s, with walking out into the dome for fine views of the moon and tiny disk of Mars at 400X.

Finally I got my fill, and I had family to visit on my first night in Columbia, so headed out. Interestingly I saw that you could rent the museum and even the telescope for private events! I loved that they had a photo of a bride fondling the nearly century-old Clark telescope! It makes such a wonderful groom!

Finally out in the parking lot, I looked back at the observatory and could barely make out the shape of the telescope and observers inside the dome, so was worth trying to get a photo from outside. Shown at right the ghostly scope can be seen thru the windows out to the patio,

In short, if you get to Columbia, in fact, anywhere in the state, it is worth your while to head down to spend the better part of a day at the State Museum. It will likely always be a destination when I'm in town!

Start of a New Adventure!

Well today marks the beginning of a 2-week adventure! Not only am I on a road trip to observe the upcoming solar eclipse crossing the country, but I'm doing it with an astronomy group from Krasnoyarsk, Russia! Last time we saw Sergey, he was escorting 11 Russian "children", as he calls them (ages 9-16), as I was in charge of their itinerary while we did astronomy stuff in Southern Arizona for 9 days! As I write this, I'm in Blythe, CA, getting part of the trip behind me so I can pick them up at LAX early tomorrow afternoon!

This time there will only be 6 kids, I believe, as well as Sergey, and since my van only sits 7, I've managed to talk a friend of mine, Margie Williams, along as a secondary driver with her pickup and jump seat. That way she'll be able to haul some gear for me and also load a passenger or to. The trip is rounded out by our friend Donna who mostly wants to see the eclipse, but also wants to experience the trip with us as well, and having a 3rd adult can't help either!

But besides playing tourists on a road trip, there is an eclipse to observe! Since we are driving, we're not limited by airline weight or size limitations, and I've got a bunch of gear totally suitable for an eclipse! Shown at left is a view of the 3 main scopes, all mounted on a single beefy AP 1200 mounting. The main scope is a 5.5" diameter refractor which will give an excellent image on the full-frame Canon 6D sensor with its 1,000mm focal length. Next to it is a much-wider field of a 300mm lens on an APS sensor. The "tilted" scope at left is actually a spectrograph with a beefy prism in front that will take a spectrum of the sun's chromosphere at 2nd and 3rd contact - something fun to do! At right is a view from the other (top) direction!

And along the way, we'll be making some first-ever visits to some states for me (Wyoming, Utah), and we'll tarry long enough to see some of the sights as well, though plans call for us to be back in Tucson a few days after the eclipse to visit some of the "old standards" that amateur astronomers would come halfway around the world to see. It all starts tomorrow, or started today - depends on how you count! Stay tuned!

Vacation Swag!

Our good friend Donna recently came back from a solar eclipse trip down in the south Pacific near Malaysia. Before she left she asked about any requests for souvenirs she could bring back for us. While not a coin collector, I asked her that instead of spending her pocket change before leaving a country, to bring it back for me - and she obliged! I wasn't much interested in coins till a couple months ago when Dick and I had our microscope comparison and coins seemed to be the thing to look at - especially in 3D.

She had flown into Australia, spent some time there, then on to Darwin to catch an ocean-going vessel for the trip to Malaysia. So upon her return had a handful of coins from each country. Of the pair of countries, Australia's was my favorite, though the "heads" of all the coins are a bit dull - all featuring the profile of Queen Elizabeth II, as shown at right. The denomination has little to do with size, at least for the "gold" coins. The $2 coin is smallest at lower left and $1 at upper right. The "silver" coins do go by size, 5 cents upper left to 50 cents lower right.

The reverse sides are much more interesting, featuring native Aussie creatures, as shown at right. On the 50 cent piece at upper left, the Aussie coat of arms is flanked by the kangaroo and emu. The 20 cent piece has an amazing depiction of a swimming platypus. The 10 cent coin has a lyrebird, and the 5 center has an echidna, a spiny anteater. The gold dollar coin at lower right is a commemorative coin from the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in 2007...

My favorite Australian coin has got to be the $2 coin. Not only does the reverse side feature a portrait of an aboriginal elder, but also features the Southern Cross, only visible from the southern hemisphere - at least from Central America southward...




By comparison, the Malaysian coins are a little more Spartan, but still pretty. The Hibiscus blossom is the national flower and is featured on the front of all the coins, along with the denomination. The reverse sides were a little more obscure, so had to look up what I was seeing on the coins, shown at right. The 5 sen coin at upper right shows 14 dots, 5 stripes, pea tendrils and a cloth pattern of an indigenous tribe. The 10 sen coin shows a Congkak game board. The 20 shows jasmine flowers with the 5 lines, 14 dots and another printing motif in the background. The older "silver" 20 sen coin below right shows a sirih and kapur container that holds betel leaves and other items used in ceremonial and social gatherings. Finally the 50 sen "gold" coin at lower left contains the 14 dots, pea tendril motif and fine lines as a security measure.

Anyway, cool stuff! U.S. coinage was so boring until they started the 50 state quarter series, and continue it into the "America the Beautiful", but seeing what other countries are doing with their coinage is impressive too, so thanks to Donna for scratching that lil' itch! Oh, and interestingly enough, shooting these coins with macro lens at an oblique angle, I couldn't keep the front/back of the coins in focus, so all the group shots above are 3-frame focus stacks to assure they are all in focus!

March '16 ARGOS Run

Regular readers know that I love recording things in the sky. While the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and the ARGOS system are not a natural phenomenon, since I worked on the fabrication of the mirrors of the huge telescope, I feel a natural bond to it atop Mount Graham. I've posted about it many times before - most recently in October, I was in position at a new observing spot about 20 miles south, but a stubborn cloud cap remaining from a clearing storm prevented their opening while I waited below. However, that post resulted in my finally putting together a nice time-lapse nearly 2 years earlier from November '13. A more general post describing the instrument and the other telescopes atop Graham is from that earlier date. This time (a couple weeks ago on 12 March) the weather was great, though a little chilly with a bone-chilling breeze. I was set up about a mile south of a small development, and about 16 miles south of the brilliant lights of Fort Grant, a State Prison, visible at the left side of the above image. From 20 miles, the laser was barely visible to the naked eye, but with binoculars could be spotted nearly to Polaris about 30 degrees high! In this image, I'm lit up by a several-day-old moon in the west, that was to set about 11pm.

Once the scope and telephoto lens was set up, you realize how difficult it is to align and focus in pitch black conditions! I ended up focusing on the rising stars of the Big Dipper's handle, but alignment on the LBT (before the laser started up) was tough requiring many short exposures as trial. It would have been much easier to get there an hour or so earlier, but time seems a rarity lately!

Finally success, as shown at left is the view of Graham with LBT and ARGOS with the 70-200 zoom set to 70mm. You can spot some of the local lights and how much the lights of the prison illuminate the southern flanks of Graham. At right in this wide image is Heliograph Peak, and while it looks to be the tallest peak, because of perspective (it is a little closer to my position) it isn't... At right is a shot of the mountaintop through the TEC 140 with its nearly 1,000mm of focal length, and the scopes atop the peak labeled. You can even spot the illumination from Fort Grant on the side of the LBT enclosure! Amazing what a minute will show in the exposure, since the laser was barely imagined to the naked eye.

All was going swimmingly - I ended up shooting over 2 hours of images with the TEC 140, potentially for a time-lapse (see below!). But when I took a first-look at the images later, I found a surprise! Shown at left is an image taken less than an hour into my shooting. While LBT had moved on to its second object of the night, there appeared to be a second "laser" appearing to emanate from the Sub-Millimeter radio telescope. But there were 2 clues about it's real source. First, clicking to load the full-size image, you can see wiggles in it as the source was affected by atmospheric disturbances, like the distant stars themselves... Also the telephoto caught part of the trail as it was disappearing behind the mountain. It was likely a distant sun-illuminated satellite disappearing over the horizon... Unfortunately, using Heavens-Above, I couldn't locate any possible candidates...


And yes, I did put together the time-lapse sequence, after editing the 140 images taken that evening with the TEC 140, and uploaded it to Youtube for your convenience! Note that the change in lighting over the time-lapse is due to the moon setting towards the end.




In conversations with the LBT director, he ended up using the shot of mine of the satellite disappearing over Graham in the LBT blog, which also includes highlights of the ARGOS run. Evidently ARGOS, which projects laser spots 10km up for partial correction of atmospheric turbulence, improved the seeing over a moderate field of view to .2 arcseconds. See the blog entry for more info.



Addendum: When I published this post late last night, I totally spaced that I got more shots of this run from a different perspective a few days later! Joe Bergeron, visiting from out of town, and I went up to San Pedro Vista on the Mount Lemmon Highway and spent an hour or so shooting towards Graham. Four days later and the moon was a lot brighter, and we were over twice as far away as above at nearly 50 miles. As a result, it was sort of murky and bright, but managed a few frames. Three images were stacked together to make the image at left. You can see a moderately bright star, heavily reddened by the the low elevation rising past the telescope and ARGOS laser. There is also enough ambient light that you can see snow on some of the higher slopes of Graham.

Another thing I've found in the last 24 hours is that when you play the above time-lapse, one of the clips it will auto-play is one made by the ARGOS team from adjacent to the LBT! It is a spectacular clip, showing what is possible with the short exposures and wide angle lens as a result of being 40 yards away, as opposed to shooting from 20+ miles with a meter-long focal length! Impressive stuff - copied here for your convenience - enjoy!

Fleeting Fame!

When I logged on last evening to post about "Trumping our cats", I noticed something peculiar going on with the Blog. On the statistic page there is a plot of readership and there was a huge spike on 1 February - for some reason, we were suddenly popular! The question was why! Shown at left, we hit nearly 500 page views on the 1st. So far as I knew, we hadn't been linked to any UFO posts, and Phil Plait, Mr. Bad Astronomy similarly hasn't linked anything to us, so had to look elsewhere...

Down at the bottom of the page, there is a gadget called "Feedjit". Clicking on the "live view" link below it brings up a page showing the last 50 folks who have looked on the blog - usually those 50 go back a day or more. But even now, those 50 only go back about 5 hours, so are still getting traffic linking to us. Examining those lines reveals where the readers live, what operating system they use, and whether they come to us directly (like a bookmarked link), or from a link from another website. In this case they were coming from the 1 February posting of Astronomy Picture of the Day!

Now the APOD website is the Holy Grail of any amateur astronomers who points a camera skyward. It is the equivalent of a musician getting his picture on Rolling Stone! I've forwarded them more than a few pictures, notably Melinda's accidental fighter jet silhouetted against the sun just before the solar eclipse of 2012, and various versions of the sun setting behind the outline of Kitt Peak National Observatory, but the most they will commit to is "we'll think about it". No, to this point they've not been interested in any images, but why folks were suddenly coming to the blog was because the astronomers who run APOD liberally use links to provide detailed descriptions of what they are trying to explain, like I do in the clickable links here. In the 1 February APOD, they were pointing out the faces people sometime see in the moon. Down in the description, they linked to my similar blog post pointing out a woman in the moon! So I'm getting closer to APOD fame - at least the Blog is on their radar and who knows - someday I might get a photo credit there!

The Subject Was Dwarfs!

Dr. Mark Sykes and Dr. Tom Fleming

Dwarf planets, that is... I frequently attend the Steward Observatory Public Evening Lecture Series, which usually meet a couple Monday nights per month (while school is in session) at the big lecture hall at Steward Observatory - the same location that the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association meets. The lecture series has been going on since the Observatory was started over 90 years ago! Of course, the University of Arizona is well known for its astronomy department, but it is across the street from the headquarters of Kitt Peak National Observatory, as well as the Lunar and Planetary Lab. So you can imagine the speakers and variety of topics is second to none! And as if you needed another excuse to go, they open the 21" telescope in the old dome for observing if the weather permits!

Such was the case last month when I attended the last talk of the semester - Dr. Mark Sykes CEO and Director of the Planetary Sciences Institute (also in Tucson!) gave a talk on recent discoveries on Ceres, Charon and Pluto. Since New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto last July, data has been trickling out as the data is downloaded from across the solar system. So It was going to be great to see the latest images and hear early interpretations of what is being seen.


The lectures are great - well attended by a wide variety of folks - both older people, of which group I include myself, and a good percentage of young college students, some of which obtain extra credit for attending the lecture. Dr. Tom Fleming, Sr. Lecturer at Steward acts as emcee, making announcements, introducing the speaker, and marking off students attendance for their class credit. At left is a 2-frame mosaic of some of the crowd as Tom makes his introductions.

Of course, the first thing Dr. Sykes had to do was talk about the demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet, one of his first slides shown at right. It turns out that the issue isn't a matter of size, but rather if it has "cleared" its orbit of other bodies. As the plot shows, even if Pluto was the size of the Earth (red arrow), it wouldn't be considered a planet! The former asteroid Ceres, now considered a dwarf planet, is the question mark symbol near the bottom - also way too small to be considered a planet.


It has been a golden age recently in spacecraft missions to the planets. Not only the big missions everyone has heard of like Cassini at Saturn, and the parade of Mars landers, but smaller missions like Dawn, spending a year at asteroid Vesta, now orbiting Ceres. And of course, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto last year. Of course, when the mission was developed and finally launched in 2006, Pluto hadn't been demoted, and was considered off to the final planet of the solar system yet to be explored.

Mark started out with the ongoing Dawn mission at Ceres. One of the greatest mysteries as it approached were the bright spots associated with several craters seen from millions of miles away. At left is his closeup of crater Occator. Dr. Sykes said that scientists were ready to announce that the bright spots were salts or brine likely containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite. Moving on to the New Horizons results, he showed some incredible images, including the two at right. Scientists had thought it would be a quiet icy world, but has been found to be incredibly diverse, both geologically and chemically.


Another thing that Mark talked about was naming issues. Almost as fast as the images came down, scientists starting naming plains, craters, features, which is generally a no-no unless approved by the IAU, conforming to naming conventions. He showed a map of Pluto's moon Charon showing jokingly (I think!) features named after characters from Star Trek, Star Wars, and other works of fiction (map shown at left).

I almost forgot! There are podcasts of the lectures, so if you want to peruse past lectures, check out the podcast link to the Public Evenings page above. When you do that you can actually watch the slides of the lecture on your computer while you listen - it is great! That means also you can hear/see Dr Sykes' talk there too!

A Less Than Optimal Alignment!

While the dry desert southwest is supposed to have long stretches of clear weather, sometimes you can't get a break! Case in point is this morning's occultation of Venus by the Moon, where the disk of the Moon approaches and blocks the brilliant disk of Venus for North America. Their celestial motions can be predicted years, even centuries in advance, but even as you set your alarm to rise before dawn, you might well be looking at the bottoms of clouds in the morning.

Such was the case this morning. Plans were made, equipment was collected and set up last night so I wouldn't have to make decisions at a time I'd normally not be awake. But when stepping outside at 4:30 to assess the situation - nothing but clouds! Oh wait - there was a spec - a much extincted spot of Jupiter was the only thing visible. I went back to bed for another hour, then rose to look again. Much better - definitely some clouds, but a chance to catch at least the pair as they converged for their close-up. At left is a 10th second exposure with a 300mm lens. The moon is shining thru some clouds, with Venus to its lower left. The clouds were quite variable, never clearing, but sometimes so thick that Venus all but disappeared. Tough to give up all together - I had to hang out and wait to see what would happen...

Well, the reward for clouds is that you can often get a spectacular sunrise or sunset, and as dawn approached, the reds and oranges of a pretty sunrise was at least some payment! For the peak of the color, the Moon/Venus pair disappeared behind the thickest cloud. Fortunately, the clouds moved fast enough to catch the pair before the color faded. The image at left was taken with the kit lens set to 30mm, hand-held at 1/8 second. And shortly after that image was taken, a nearly clear spot moved in and I hustled to grab some frames with the Meade 80mm F/6 (480mm focal length) which framed the pair nicely and still easily fitting Venus in the view.

Unfortunately, as the sun rose, the clouds lit up a dull grey and the Moon/Venus pair disappeared. The occultation, where the Moon passes in front of Venus is still an hour away, but with the sun above the horizon, it will be impossible to see unless it is nearly clear. I already gave my notice I'd be late to work, so will hang out at home, but it is looking pretty hopeless. At least the pair against the dawn was a pretty catch - maybe even worth losing a couple hours of sleep!

Epilogue - Well, I got something! Even though it looked pretty hopeless 30 minutes before the Moon was scheduled to cover (occult) Venus, I set up the TEC 140 scope to equilibrate a bit when some blue-ish sky was seen towards the west. While doing other Monday morning chores (cat feeding, garbage to curb) I decided to give it a try and of course, was rushing like a madman to the end. Camera on scope, focus on distant pole, grab binoculars to try to find the Moon (was not using a tracking mount) which was tough in a partly cloudy sky. Finally spotted it right on the meridian in binoculars with a brilliant jewel adjacent to it. Swung up the scope and tried to use live view to focus - a disaster in the bright daytime. A quick look through the camera and I got a better view than through the binoculars, so pushed the button for two quick exposures, adjusted a stop or two between them on the shutter. Returned to live view and never saw anything to focus on. Another glance in the camera and the jewel was gone - the planet blocked by the Moon. Carried the camera in, hoping I got something and I'd say it is something. Not critically focused, but the bright jewel of Venus a couple seconds before moving behind the limb of the moon. I consider myself lucky to get anything with the clouds and the difficulty they added. Perhaps not spectacular enough to make the annual highlights, but a real adventure nonetheless!