Just some cool pics

These were all on Bings featured photos today. BEAUTIFUL!

Astronomical Event

Over the course of the semester I can honestly say I did see anything that was "out of this world" (no pun intended), but I did really sit and think about how small we are here on planet Earth. I have always loved looking at the stars and have always been intrigued by astronomy, but the more I learned in class, the more I thought when I was sitting just looking. I won't lie I got freaked out a few times thinking about whats truly out there. Everything to me that I have viewed has been an astronomical event for me. Learning how the constellations move and actually seeing it happen was awesome. At the beginning of the semester Orion's Belt was right out my door and now I can barley see it from the same spot I saw it before. This semester really made me think not just look. I really, throughly, enjoyed this "project".

Shooting Star

Last week at about 5:30am i saw a shooting star. It was almost at 90 degrees above. It only appeared in the sky for about 2 - 3 second, just long enough for me to see it. It looked like it was a red tint which was weird to me because I had always assumed shooting stars were blue. It was cool to see, I haven't seen a shooting star since I was probably like 12.

The picture below is from NASA.com which I'm obsessed at looking at the amazing picture on there. =)

Venus

So in my previous post I said Mercury was supposed to be out when in fact it was Venus, Which I did see. It was in the west with an azimuth of about 70 degrees. It has been visible almost every night from dusk til late into the night. It was pretty bright with a red tint. As for Mercury, it is out now but I have yet to see it=)

Mercury

So I looked last night for Mercury even though it was cloudy and SNOWY! But no luck. The sky's pretty clear tonight in Ada so I will try again. I found so "cool info" at SkyandTelescope.com about the Planets locations in late March and early April.

This Week's Sky at a Glance
by Alan M. MacRobert
Some daily events in the changing sky for April 9 – 17.

Friday, April 9

Mercury remains to the right of Venus at dusk, but see how it has faded! Mercury is now swinging between us and the Sun and consequently, in a telescope, it's becoming a thinner little crescent. See article.
Saturday, April 10

A small telescope will always show Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Tonight and tomorrow Titan is four ring-lengths to Saturn's east. A 6-inch telescope will begin to show the orange color of its smoggy atmosphere. A guide to identifying other Saturnian satellites often visible in amateur scopes is in the April Sky & Telescope, page 47.
At dawn Sunday morning, look for the waning crescent Moon low in the east. Look about 5° below it for Jupiter (seen from North America), as shown below.


MARS' STATS TONIGHT :
Mercury
Friday, April 09, 2010
Distance From
Sun: 31,536,403 Miles
Earth: 83,254,299 Miles
Constellation: Aries
Phase: 42%
Size: 42%
RA: 2 hr 19 min
DEC: 16° 47'
Magnitude: 0.08
Rises: 6:46 AM
Transits: 1:33 PM
Sets: 8:16 PM

Planets

So after browsing the internet for my semester long project, I stumbled along a web page about Michigan night sky and what you "should" see and according to mich.info/news/skymap.htm Saturn, Mars, Mercury, and Venus are all in the sky at this very moment (8:36 pm)I tried to get the picture but It wouldn't let me copy it =( This is what the picture looked like but I made this one on paint.

Sunrise

I observe the sunrise almost everyday, which I thought I'd never say, but when you're up at 5:00 am everyday, you tend to see the sunrise a lot. This morning I decided to actually take a picture. I took this picture at roughly 7:50 am in Ada. The sun had an altitude of about 20 degrees. With in the next 5 minutes, the sun rose what seemed to be quite quickly. As much as I love a pretty sunset, there is nothing like a pretty sunrise to start a good day. =)

Iridium Flare and Satellites

While on spring break, I went to Arizona. We stayed in several places including the Grand Canyon. Grand Canon is at a Latitude of 36.0540°N. There time is GMT, and their weather is nuts. =) One day it went from 70 degrees in the valley to 28 degrees in the Mnts. :/ I thought I left Mi for no snow..... On March 13 we stayed in Grand Canyon and much to my surprise there was going to be an Iridium Flare traveling through there and...I saw it!, I think.. The flare I hopefully saw, according to Heavens Above, was flare 22 which was seen around 19:30.

I saw a dim flash for just a brief second. It was eye catching but had I not know what if was I would have played it off to be a plane, like I do most on the time.
While out there, I also think I saw some satellites but can never be to sure because there is an airport close to every place we went. It would make sense that I did see them, because after checking Heavens Above, there were several passing through everyday.

Here are two of the satellites I saw up close...uncanny :)


I really did see real satellites though =)

The Mooooooon

The moon-

So I HAD 4 awesome pictures of the moon, was was even from the day when it was a wanning gibbous bright white in the bright blue sky, they were good and I deleted them from my camera =( sooo mad. Not only were the pictures on there but also the dates and times the pictures were taken. I can tell you what moons I observes, but as far as when, I don't know. It was in the latter part of April.
I will estimate based on this really cool web page I found: http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases_calendar.phtml
It gives the moon on each day and you can also look forward month to see what it will be.

I wanted to look at the moon over just a short period, so I could notice change, I know the moons I saw so I will estimate the days:

-March 2nd (which I know for sure) - Was a wanning gibbous, and unless you looked closely it almost looked full. (this is the one I saw early morning)
-April 28th- The moon was full and gorgeous! I had a picture of it rising it was super low alt ~30 degrees. The picture I had was really cool because the moon looked huge and it was gold. I saw it while in the Meijer parking lot, very cool.
-April 9th - 11th - I know I viewed a waxing crescent obviously before the full, the day exact is not for sure but I do remember how bright they were. I looked at the moon in Ada (which is always less bright than Allendale) and in Allendale in my parking lot. The moon was fairly high in the sky each time I looked, alt ~70, so I must have viewed them later at night.
-The first moon I remember "documenting" was a waxing gibbous and I knew I took the picture awhile ago so it must have been around the 25th of April. This one I remember looking at in Ada park, I pulled over because it was so bright and high. Alt ~60.

Although I goofed on these pictures, I still will continue to look at the moon because it's beautiful!

Sunset

Sunset is pretty much one of my favorite times of day. I think I have over 50 pictures of sunsets. They mesmerize me. Because its winter and we really don't see pretty sunsets,When we had a few I took the chance to take pictures. I literally made my boyfriend pull over on the side of the road so I could take a picture. It weird how summer sunsets and winter sunsets look so different but equally as pretty. The first sunset picture was taken between Jenison and Allendale on Cottonwood Rd. The picture was taken at 6:06pm on Feb 3rd.




The next sunset picture was taken today (Feb 10) at 5:43pm. I took this while driving (I know bad):/ It was taken over Grand Rapids. Pretty Pretty. The weather was horrible in the morning, surprising there was a cool sunset.

The Moon and Mars

Tonight (January 29th 2010), the moon is supposed to be the biggest and brightest of all tonight. It is being called the "super moon and the "wolf moon". It is said to appear 30% brighter and 14% larger tonight. It also has a partner- Mars (National Geographic.com).

While in Ada at 7:15pm the sky was crystal clear, not a cloud in the sky. I stopped on my way home to take a look, as well as the moon being beautiful, Mars was super red. I wasn't aware this was Mar until I came home to look online about astronomy. As I pulled into Allendale, the sky was cloudy. =( How does 25 miles make such a large difference!? So I'm glad I stopped in Ada to see the beautiful full moon and Mars nestled in to the left of the full moon. It appeared no bigger than a star but the red color was bright.

According to NatGeo, the moon will be closes to the earth at 4:04am tomorrow morning, I'm tempted to get up and look. Hopefully it will be clear.

I attached a picture which was taken in Allendale at 8:00pm but Mars is not apparent. It didn't show up in the picture from Ada either. If I get up at 4 I'll attempt another picture.

Day One- Finally a clear sky

At 5:09 am today I got up to look at the sky..not willingly of course, but none the less I did. It was crystal clear and BEAUTIFUL! Had it not been for the less than 20 degree weather, I would have stayed out there this the sun diminished the stars appearance. I did not check the conditions for this morning until after the fact, but since it was nice yesterday (1/20), I figured it might be clear. Here are the predicted cloud conditions taken from cleardarksky.com



This morning I saw several constellations including:
The Big Dipper


Cepheus


Draco



I viewed them from a bit of a wooded area so some aspects were covered, but overall I could see perfect.


Constellation pictures taken from Bing Images