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!