124 replies to this topic

[goldberry]

Very cool.  They'd be awesome views of the city.  I'd rather be up in that chopper than up that Sky Tower ready to absail.  Someone tried to pressure me into doing that once.  :o

[goldberry]

Kelly A said:

No, I was installing and testing a prototype for the first stabilized HD helicopter camera for a customer here. They have a low res example of some of their helicopter footage here.

Anyway, they also run scenic tours and stuff, and wanted to show off their boat on our day off. It was a nice island, and I saw several endangered species (but I can't remember what they were right now).

Unfortunately NZ has a severe record of having native birds wiped out.  It hasn't helped that many of said bird species tend to be flightless.  The world's largest ever flightless bird, the Moa, was wiped out by the Maori and no European ever got to see one.  They were gone by about 1600 I think.

[wagtail]

2009 is the international year of astronomy.  

The moon and venus seem a little lonely now without jupiter, but it's still a very nice sight at the moment.

[Uncle Remus]

Look up. What do I see?
Ahhhhhhhh.
The white ceiling of the Computer Room, to my right my framed, original poster promoting Big Brother & the Holding Company playing at the Avalon Ballroom with special guests, The Sir Douglas Quintet, and a framed Tim Easton autographed poster next to that, and a framed picture of me running the Los Angeles Marathon back in the day when I was actually about twenty pounds lighter and in much better shape, to my left a framed picture of handwritten lyrics by Minutemen/Firehouse bassist, Mike Watt.

[wagtail]

I thought I'd post a link to a site where you can download free monthly sky maps [for both southern and northern hemispheres]:

http://skymaps.com/

the map includes information on astronomical features each month, but you can also check that information out the monthly sky calendars here:

http://skymaps.com/articles/index.html

here's what's happening in January, 2009:

Quote

Sky Calendar -- January 2009
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1">  <tbody><tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 3 </td> <td> Quadrantid Meteor Shower peaks at 12:50 UT. Produces up to 100 medium-speed meteors per hour. Radiant is in the constellation Boötes. Parent comet is unknown. Very favorable this year.
• The Quadrantids (Gary Kronk)
• Meteor Shower Calendar 2009 (IMO) </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 4 </td> <td> First Quarter Moon at 11:56 UT. </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 4 </td> <td> Mercury at greatest elongation, 19° east from Sun (evening sky) at 14h UT. Mag. -0.5, very low in the southwest 30 minutes after sunset. </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 4 </td> <td> Earth at Perihelion (closest to Sun) at 15h UT. The Sun-Earth distance is 0.983273 a.u. or about 147.1 million kilometers. </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 7 </td> <td> Moon near the Pleiades at 19h UT (evening sky). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 10 </td> <td> Moon at perigee (closest to Earth) at 11h UT (357,497 km; 33.6'). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 11 </td> <td> Full Moon at 3:27 UT. The full Moon of January is called the Old Moon or the Moon After Yule in North American folklore.
• Full Moon Names (Wikipedia) </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 12 </td> <td> Moon near Beehive cluster (M44) at 5h UT. </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 14 </td> <td> Venus at greatest elongation, 47° east from Sun (evening sky) at 21h UT. Mag. -4.4. </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 15 </td> <td> Moon near Saturn at 7h UT (morning sky). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 17 </td> <td> Moon near Spica at 19h UT (morning sky). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 18 </td> <td> Last Quarter Moon at 2:46 UT. </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 20 </td> <td> Mercury at inferior conjunction with the Sun at 16h UT. Passes into the morning sky (not visible). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 21 </td> <td> Moon very near Antares at 14h UT (morning sky). Occultation visible from central S. America (daytime).
• Occultation of Antares (IOTA) </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 23 </td> <td> Moon at apogee (farthest from Earth) at 0h UT (distance 406,118 km; angular size 29.4'). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 24 </td> <td> Jupiter at conjunction with the Sun at 6h UT. Passes into the morning sky (not visible). </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 26 </td> <td> New Moon at 7:55 UT. Start of lunation 1065.
• Lunation Number (Wikipedia) </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 26 </td> <td> Annular Solar Eclipse visible along a narrow path across the Indian Ocean and parts of Indonesia. Partial phases visible from southern Africa and (around sunset) Australia and southeast Asia.
• Total Solar Eclipse of 2009 January 26 (NASA)
• Eclipses in 2009 (Sky & Telescope) </td> </tr> <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td width="30"> 30 </td> <td> Moon near Venus at 9h UT (46° from Sun, evening sky). </td> </tr>   <tr align="left" valign="top"> <td colspan="2"> All times Universal Time (UT). USA Eastern Standard Time = UT - 5 hours. </td> </tr> </tbody></table>  

[wagtail]

Sometimes even the professionals have to use a cheap-arse video camera to photograph the sky:

Quote

Quick thinking helps WA team capture death of star

An Australian team has marked the beginning of the International Year of Astronomy by revealing its discovery of the death of a star and the birth of a black hole.

The huge gamma ray burst was the most distant event ever seen from Western Australia, and one of the most distant seen from the nation as a whole.

The Australian team was the first in the world to see it, but then disaster struck when a computer crash meant the team's sophisticated astronomy camera stopped working.

The Zadko telescope, north of Perth, captured an image of a explosion that occurred about 11 billion years ago.

Dr David Coward told ABC Radio's AM the explosion resulted from the explosion of a massive star about 100 times bigger than our sun.

"This star exploded 11 billion years in our past and it's taken that long for the photons of light or the messengers from this event to reach us," he said.

"This is quite a spectacular event in the universe that this telescope has managed to capture."

The University of Western Australia team saw the event in November, but they could not confirm it until recently when images were finally enhanced.

A computer crash at the time meant they were lucky to get a recorded image of the event at all.

Dr Coward says the team had to use a video camera.
"We had a catastrophic failure of the CCD camera ... essentially, the computer that runs the camera," he said.

"We had a video camera that was much much cheaper and ... a colleague of ours, Timo Vaalsta, managed to quickly get this video camera onto the telescope and start imaging this event.

"What's interesting is these events are transient, they occur over a matter of hours so you can't go back to the same spot and image this event, it's gone forever, these are one-off things."

He said the team was the first in the world to see it, despite only capturing evidence through a simple video camera.

"That's the irony is that the images that were obtained hours later by the biggest telescopes in the world had state of the art CCD cameras worth hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said.

"We were able to image this event with a simple video camera, which is under $1,000 compared to hundreds of thousands."

He says the team believes this is the first time an optical afterglow from a gamma ray burst has been observed from Western Australia.

"It's good for WA to know that we're participating in a globalised science because this sort of science is really about having telescopes all over the world performing these sorts of observations," he said.

"Our observation was reported to NASA and this information was distributed to about 190 observatories all over the world."

He says the CCD camera is being tested again so it can be ready for next time.

"We're also quite encouraged by the fact that this video camera can also do some pretty good science so we're definitely going to have the video camera as a backup," he said.

"The CCD camera is working and we're starting to do our first tests again.

"We're hoping that another gamma ray burst will go off in the next few months [and] that we can image that as well."
   As told to David Weber for AM, January 2.

http://www.abc.net.a...ction=australia

[Lori]

Hey Rebekah, I was wondering if you're a member of the Astronomical Society of S.A.?  I know they used to have an observatory at Douglas scrub which I think is local to you but I believe they haven't used it for a while.  Have you been to any of the meetings & star parties?
I like to take pics when I can.  Haven't for a while though.  My last one was of a moon eclipse but it's from a  year or so ago.

Edited by Lori, 03 January 2009 - 03:23 AM.
More to add

[wagtail]

Lori said:

Hey Rebekah, I was wondering if you're a member of the Astronomical Society of S.A.?  I know they used to have an observatory at Douglas scrub which I think is local to you but I believe they haven't used it for a while.  Have you been to any of the meetings & star parties?
I like to take pics when I can.  Haven't for a while though.  My last one was of a moon eclipse but it's from a  year or so ago.

I've looked at their website a couple of times, but they always seem to have things at Mawson Lakes, which is waaay too far for me.  I haven't heard about anything at Douglas Scrub...was it at the Guides property?...I used to coordinate the conservation work there, so I know the place...they have sheoaks and quandongs going gangbusters in there, and lots of native orchids. very nice.

[this honey]

I love mountains ...
and clouds ! :)


http://www.komonews....g/35631614.html

[capi]

this honey said:

I love mountains ...
and clouds ! :)


http://www.komonews....g/35631614.html

Those are gorgeous cloud formations.  I've never seen any like that.

[wagtail]

capi said:

Those are gorgeous cloud formations.  I've never seen any like that.

indeed.  great photos, thanks for the link.

[this honey]

aren't they amazing :)

[Lori]

wagtail said:

  I haven't heard about anything at Douglas Scrub...was it at the Guides property?...I used to coordinate the conservation work there, so I know the place...they have sheoaks and quandongs going gangbusters in there, and lots of native orchids. very nice.

Yes I think it is Rebekah, I know the scouts use it sometimes.  I just thought you may have gone to an observation night there at some point when it was used by the ASSA  because it's near you  & this thread it kinda like what they do.  Cool.:)

[Kelly A]

Definitely a bright full moon tonight.

[OldManRay]

Kelly A said:

Definitely a bright full moon tonight.

I'll have to take your word for that.  (Actually we could see it through some thin cloud last night - a nice surprise on a Seattle winter's evening).

[Leilani]

I got up and checked I hadn't turned the outside light on the night before last - so it must have been shiney here then.

[wagtail]

I was outside marveling at the southern stars tonight and remembered this thread.

I thought I'd post a couple of photos from my flight home, the first is of the sunrise above the clouds...this was over the Pacific Ocean, about 3000km out of Sydney.  The second is a rainbow over the wing, I've never seen a rainbow from an aircraft before, so I thought it was kinda cool, I think I was about an hour out of Sydney when I saw that:

http://murmurs.com/f...=1&d=1240999420


http://murmurs.com/f...=1&d=1240999420

[stiperules!ok]

Just seen 5 or 6 bright shooting stars!

Couldn't take a photo cause my camera's not good enough, and even if it was I wouldn't have got to it in time!

[TheReverendBingo]

All of you and all of me, thats what i see

[alchemist]

Early this morning about 4.30 am it was crisp and getting frosty and the sky was like a black fabric with diamonds and the biggest was Venus, just beautiful and huge! Worth a look, as I could see it until sunrise.