Starship Asterisk*

saturno2 wrote:
I woke up in the night and saw through the window a beautiful Crescent Moon.

What??

I had to wake up very good and to see my Calendar Moon.

This is a Waning Moon
In my area almost never see a Waning Moon
The Moon did me a April joke

Last night I saw Saturn for the first time. No telescope, but it was special anyway. After weeks of clouds, we had a good clear sky in the south and south-west, so, from our terrace, I could see (west to east)

Sirius (just ) and Procyon,
The constellation Leo, looking really regal,
The constellation Corvus - once I'd got a bit of night vision
Spica
SATURN
And - Arcturus. These three made a splendid triangle, whilst the rest of Boötes disappeared in clouds.

And then - an owl silently, palely glowing, whirling around in front of Corvus....

Oh, shiver-making.
And so special.

Margarita

A wonderful evening to be out last night (May 26). Warm and dark (until the Moon came up). I started just after sunset, and caught the beautiful conjunction of Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury in the western sky:
And then, in the couple of dark hours before the Moon came up, I piggybacked my EOS 7D on the back of my telescope and collected a set of images of comet Panstarrs to stack. The comet looked good through the telescope eyepiece, but was best through binoculars, where it nearly filled the field. In this shot, the antitail is 4.5° long (where it goes off the edge). The Earth crossed the plane of the comet's orbit last night, so the antitail was at its most prominent. The image is a stack of 16 2-minute exposures.

I love the picture of Venus, Jupiter and Mercury with the tree silhouettes. I'm hoping to see this conjunction (I've never seen Mercury) but we have gone back to thick cloud cover. Especially to the west, which is the ocean so tends to be misty anyway.

I've just seen some noctilucent clouds. I get up so early, so it's no surprise that I should be able to see these clouds if they are there, but it is rather a surprise that I should have seen some now, in the first week of June. Before, I have only seen noctilucent clouds in late June or early July.

Ann

Noctilucent clouds, again.

Ann

WOW! Looks like people haven't been looking up at night too much for the last month and a half. Well, what i saw was the moon in a clear sky to the south, but as i looked to the north and followed the handle of the Big Dipper, everything disappeared after the third star. No bowl in sight, or anything else, just a very faint sort of streak where everything disappeared at. I figured that the faint streak must have been the edge of clouds stretching in a northerly direction, that were faintly illuminated by the moon. I also saw just a little bit of light from a lightening flash. So i went and checked the radar map and found that there were two lines of thunderstorms up north. One was off to the N/E past Boston Mass. about 100 miles away, and the other line was up the New Hampshire/Vermont area, about 160 miles away. So I've discovered that it's possible to see the light from a lightening flash 100 to 160 miles away, even if you live out in the country and don't have a clear horizon.

Beyond wrote:WOW! Looks like people haven't been looking up at night too much for the last month and a half. Well, what i saw was the moon in a clear sky to the south, but as i looked to the north and followed the handle of the Big Dipper, everything disappeared after the third star. No bowl in sight, or anything else, just a very faint sort of streak where everything disappeared at. I figured that the faint streak must have been the edge of clouds stretching in a northerly direction, that were faintly illuminated by the moon. I also saw just a little bit of light from a lightening flash. So i went and checked the radar map and found that there were two lines of thunderstorms up north. One was off to the N/E past Boston Mass. about 100 miles away, and the other line was up the New Hampshire/Vermont area, about 160 miles away. So I've discovered that it's possible to see the light from a lightening flash 100 to 160 miles away, even if you live out in the country and don't have a clear horizon.

Yes, you can see lightning coming from below the horizon, even when you are completely cloudless. BTW, those are perfect conditions to look for sprites, which are high in the atmosphere over that lightning. If you have no local clouds getting in the way, the sprites may be visible near the horizon.

ha-ha, in my case, the local trees prevent me from seeing a lot of the local clouds, so i don't know if i would have clouds in the way or not. The little bit of light i saw from a lightening flash i saw to the west of my local tree barrier. That's why i couldn't tell which storm system it came from.

I cycled to the outskirts of my town to watch Venus in the western sky...it was so beautiful.

Moonrise and thunderclouds at sunset (June 20).

Nice one. Seeing the red light of the setting sun illuminate a wall of cumulonimbus never fails to inspire. I'm afraid your camera didn't do the scene much justice.

geckzilla wrote:Nice one. Seeing the red light of the setting sun illuminate a wall of cumulonimbus never fails to inspire. I'm afraid your camera didn't do the scene much justice.

Yeah, I didn't have my good camera with me. Just the one in my phone.

As the sun has just set, i looked out my window to the east and saw the bottom of the left side of a rainbow. There's no rain around or any dark clouds, so the air must be full of moisture.
It came down in Rhode Island. I was temped to go look for the pot-of-gold, as Rhode Island is rather small, but there's a lot of back roads in that state that one can get lost in very easily, so i figured I'd better not risk it.

I just saw the faint ghostly white streak of a meteor that went from east to west, just missing the handle of the Big Dipper. It's a good thing it missed, or it might have sloshed out some water and we've had enough rain for a while, here in the east coast.

Beyond wrote:As the sun has just set, i looked out my window to the east and saw the bottom of the left side of a rainbow. There's no rain around or any dark clouds, so the air must be full of moisture.
It came down in Rhode Island. I was temped to go look for the pot-of-gold, as Rhode Island is rather small, but there's a lot of back roads in that state that one can get lost in very easily, so i figured I'd better not risk it.

Being an Island of Rhodes it might be really easy to get lost on....if you didn't have a Rhode Map

BMAONE23 wrote:

Beyond wrote:As the sun has just set, i looked out my window to the east and saw the bottom of the left side of a rainbow. There's no rain around or any dark clouds, so the air must be full of moisture.
It came down in Rhode Island. I was temped to go look for the pot-of-gold, as Rhode Island is rather small, but there's a lot of back roads in that state that one can get lost in very easily, so i figured I'd better not risk it.

Being an Island of Rhodes it might be really easy to get lost on....if you didn't have a Rhode Map

ha-ha, good one, BMAONE23. But actually, Rhode Island is not really an island at all. It is mostly a swamp with lots of high sections that are full of little roads. Maybe that's why it is also called "Little Rhody".

Beyond, you mean the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, surely!

As for what I saw in the sky last night, Cassiopeia was about it.

Providence Plantations Don't think I've heard that term before. But i could have missed it, the whole thing is so small.

Beyond wrote:Providence Plantations Don't think I've heard that term before. But i could have missed it, the whole thing is so small.

It it a Trivial Persuit answer to the geography question "What US state has the longest name"

owlice wrote:the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

BMAONE23 wrote:It is a Trivial Pursuit answer to the geography question "What US state has the longest name?"

Perhaps a bit of overcompensation for their small size?

Wow! Rhode Island even has it's own state rock... Cumberlandite, that is only found in Rhode Island. Rhode Island may be small, but it's Big on other stuff. And, it's also fast to get out of. You can get out of Rhode Island from just about anywhere in it, in about 20 minutes, as long as you don't go south. Then you would need a very good set of water wings on your vehicle

Probably doesn't have as cool a state sport as Maryland does, though.

owlice wrote:Probably doesn't have as cool a state sport as Maryland does, though.

I don't know of any state that has an official state sport, except Maryland, now.

Got to look up in the day, too! Out riding today and saw all of this:

First, a beautiful circumhorizon arc. It is already starting to fade here... it lasted just seconds, a real scramble from horseback to get out my phone and shoot an image before it disappeared. It was twice as intense just before this.
And then, a thunderhead blasting spectacularly upwards. Thought we'd be caught out in bad lightning, but it missed us, and dissipated again in less than an hour.
And just as we got home, a short, moderately heavy rain in full sunlight, producing a great rainbow.