Sunday, August 18, 2019

Sunday Green Flash

For an observer just north of Hato, the Space Station sailed right across the Moon at 7:25 this morning, but I didn't see it due to haze and clouds, grrr.   I've tried to image this a couple times and failed, but I did observe it once, back in the day.  But, on the other hand, there was a nice green flash tonight!  You'll want to watch the video clip full screen.

When the Sun is about to touch the horizon, a sort of red false sun rises up to meet it.  This is called an inferior mirage.  While the atmospheric refraction is indeed splitting the sun into different colors like a prism, one needs the inferior mirage to amplify the effect so we can see it easily.

When I see the red false sun come up from the horizon to meet the setting sun, I can be pretty sure I'll see a green flash.

During the second half of the video, there are a couple bits of green that peel off from the top of the sun.  That is caused by an inferior mirage too, I believe.

Oh, and I'm going to try to borrow better tripod to see if it would help reduce all the wind induced jiggling in the videos.

Tuesday, August 06, 2019

Sunset at the Huts

We did some group stargazing at Red Slave Sunday night. I got there early, in case there would be a green flash, but it was pretty cloudy and hazy, as can be seen in the photos. 

But the sky overhead was very clear and we all had a great time. 

Bud Gillan and I stayed late and observed Neptune and Uranus with my 20x80 binoculars.

Saturday, August 03, 2019

Moon and Towers

There was a skinny moon Friday night. I zoomed out to the TWR transmitter site to see what i could see.


Milky Way at TWR TX site

Here are a couple shot of the Milky Way over the TWR towers. 

I'm going to need to remember to try to shoot this a month or two earlier in the year, to get the Milky Way where I want it to be.

(weather permitting of course)