I managed to get a few shots of the near-conjunction of the crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus tonight before they sank into the haze.
The first two shots were taken at twilight (well, dusk, really), around 5:05–5:10 PM PST, while the third was taken at 5:30, after night had fallen.
This is actually from a couple of nights ago, but the view as I left the office tonight was about the same (though the lights were just starting to turn on in this picture).
It’s really odd to walk out of the building into a lot that’s normally lighted (even when I head in to do emergency server maintenance at midnight) and see it completely dark.
Well, not completely dark. There was a little light leaking from windows behind me, and streetlights filtering through trees, and what I could see of the sign on the building across the street. Nothing compared to some of the camping trips I’ve been on, or the drive through Ka‘u at night. But for a suburban office building, it was a change.
Edit: Oops! For some reason I’ve been convinced that this was Saturn, but it’s actually Jupiter.
I remember being bowled over when astronomers first detected planets around other stars. Now they’ve actually managed to get pictures!
Of course, they’re about as detailed as pictures of the stars at a science-fiction convention panel taken from the back of the room, or the band on stage from the upper-top-fifth-tier seating (see! that dot there is so-and-so!), but still…it’s a start.
There’s one photo from Hubble of the planetary debris disc around Fomalhaut, with a little dot that apparently has been tracked in other images, consistent with being in orbit around the star. It’s estimated at being about the size of Jupiter and about four times as far out from its star as Neptune is from the sun.
Meanwhile: consider that we can see something the size of Jupiter even though it’s 25 light years away!
Then there’s one from the Gemini North telescope that has actually caught two planets in orbit around a star called HR 8799 — a photo of a planetary system!
Update: Hubblesite has more on Fomalhaut including this image showing Fomalhaut B’s location in 2004 and 2006:
I found this while looking through a box of old photos, in an envelope marked Lunar Eclipse and developed in June 1994. Most likely the May 25, 1994 eclipse.
I’m not sure, but I think the bright splotch near the bottom is actually the moon, and the clear image of the moon up near the top is a reflection inside the camera. I have no idea whether the ring is an atmospheric phenomenon that got picked up on the film, or just lens flare.
Update: It was most likely taken with a point-and-shoot fixed-focus 35mm camera (though I had an SLR by that time that my grandfather had given me, so I’m not sure why I wouldn’t have used it). But even if it’s a really messed-up picture of an eclipse, it’s still an interesting-looking picture, IMO, which is why I scanned it.
The Value of Space Exploration, via Phil Plait.
Neil Gaiman on The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, a painting by a madman that’s inspired its share of stories.
And from Comics Worth Reading, our WTF entry for the day: Paradise by the GoPhone Light. It’s a commercial done in the style of a music video, featuring Meat Loaf and Tiffany as the parents of a kid who wants a GoPhone. Completely surreal, especially once the random explosions start.
It’s just occurred to me that, aside from it being some sort of cell phone, I have no idea what a GoPhone is. [/me types “gophone” into Google] Ah, OK. Pre-paid cellphone. Meh. (And now I’m imagining how much spam is going to get posted to this thread. *sigh* )
This is cool: a fascinating tour of the world’s cities as seen in visible light from the International Space Station.
Cities at Night, an Orbital Tour Around the World
It’s interesting to see how just lighting illustrates different patterns in city development. European cities have this star topology, US cities tend to stick to the north/south grid. Different countries tend to use different colors of lighting, with the western cities more yellowish and cities in the middle east and Asia more greenish. There’s a view along the Nile, where the river runs through the middle of a channel of lights, beyond which everything is empty.
There’s also a mosaic of the Los Angeles/Orange County/San Diego area, which really points out that there’s quite a bit of emptiness still in the OC area: The Santa Ana Mountains to the northeast, and the San Joaquin Hills to the sourthwest, make large dark areas. The northwest plain melds seamlessly into the Los Angeles area, while a narrow (but very bright) channel winds its way through the middle before opening up into south county.
The downside, as pointed out in the comments, is that this is all wasted energy. With lamps that direct all of their light downward instead of out into space, we could light our cities with less energy and keep the skies dark for stargazing.
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day features a view of Mauna Kea’s shadow on the sky, just at the tail end of last week’s lunar eclipse:
I couldn’t help but be reminded of our visit to the summit in April 2005, just at sunset, when I took this similar (but decidedly less cool) photo:
Atmospheric Optics explains why most mountains’ shadows look triangular when viewed from their summits.
