Stargazing

Carnivals and Comets

Posted by elizabeth on Feb 24, 2009 in Ferrara, Stargazing | Comments Off

Fat Tuesday! The last day of Carnival!

Ferrara celebrates Il Carnevale

Comet Lulin update: clouds last night. Will try again tonight.

Stargazing Update

Posted by elizabeth on Feb 23, 2009 in Stargazing | 2 comments

Don’t forget to keep an eye out for Comet Lulin tonight and tomorrow night. It’s kind of cloudy here right now and I’m hoping the clouds blow off by tonight.

The coolest thing about Comet Lulin (besides being backwards and green, both of which are both pretty cool in themselves) is that this is its one trip around the sun. Most comets have orbits and return periodically, even if their periods are hundreds of years. Lulin, however, appears to have enough velocity to escape from the solar system entirely on its way out, and disappear forever into deep space. So we are the only people, in the whole history of mankind and the entire future of mankind, to see it.

Stargazing is just pretty incredible.

The Cloud Moon

Posted by elizabeth on Feb 10, 2009 in Moons, Stargazing, Weather | 4 comments

The February full moon was last night. As you can see, the February stargazing score is now clouds two, Elizabeth zero—all I saw was a fuzzy-looking disk (no, that’s not the camera, it’s the clouds) high over the gables of our house. This full moon is usually called the Snow Moon or Hunger Moon. Colonial Americans called it the Trapper’s Moon and in medieval England it was sometimes called the Storm Moon. The Chinese refer to it as the Budding Moon (and some of our trees are already budding—it’s in the seventies today, although we’re under a tornado watch at the moment) and the Celts called it the Ice Moon. This year I’m calling it the Cloud Moon!

An Unordered List

Posted by elizabeth on Feb 5, 2009 in Flat Stanley, Lists, Pedometer, Reading, Stargazing | 2 comments

• I didn’t get to see the occultation of the Pleiades by the gibbous moon on Tuesday night. It was cloudy. Boo hiss clouds. One of the hazards of stargazing.
• I don’t know how people manage 10,000 steps a day on pedometers. The best I’ve been able to do is about 6,000, and that includes a walk with the doggies.
• What I am reading right now: The Serpent’s Tale by Ariana Franklin. I loved Mistress of the Art of Death and I love this one, too. The story of “Fair Rosamund” has always intrigued me and I’m willing to suspend all sorts of disbelief to immerse myself in Franklin’s evocative, texture-rich tale.
• Flat Stanley update: “Flat” is about to conclude his adventures in Texas and return home. Yesterday he helped me glue together a birdhouse.
• Many thanks to everyone for the congratulations and well-wishes on signing with Fox Literary. Welcome to the new visitors to the blog! It’s up to Barbara now, to make her way in the world.

The Skies of February

Posted by elizabeth on Jan 31, 2009 in History, Moons, Stargazing | 2 comments

Here’s my stargazing schedule for the coming month:

February 3rd: the gibbous moon will pass north of the Pleiades, eclipsing (well, the real term is occulting) some of the brightest stars. The dark side of the moon will cover the stars first, and then they will reappear from the moon’s bright side. Pretty cool.

February 9th: the full moon, called the Snow Moon. On that same night, there’ll be a penumbral lunar eclipse, which means the moon will pass through the edge of the Earth’s shadow. Truth be told, you won’t really see anything, but why not watch and imagine?

February 24th: Comet Lulin, a unique two-tailed comet, will reach its peak of brightness. Lulin was discovered in July 2007, and is named for the Lu-lin Observatory on Mt. Front Lu-Lin in Taiwan.

February 27th: the crescent moon and the bright planet Venus will be only a degree and a half apart. I am going to try to take a picture of this. I managed a fair picture of the “sad face” moon-Venus-Jupiter conjunction on December 2nd:

The crescent of the moon is a little blurry, but as the Broadcasting Legend™ says, 252,000 miles is a pretty long focal length for our little backyard camera. One day I’m going to buy the adapters and gadgets I need to attach the camera to my telescope. Although I don’t really want my stargazing to get too professional. What I love about it the most is the mystery and the history—the sense of millenia of people looking up at the sky and seeing the same things.

Six Things That Make Me Happy

Posted by elizabeth on Jan 14, 2009 in Beagles, Books, Life, Lists, Poetry, Reading, Stargazing | 2 comments

Tagged again! This time, it’s Bryn Greenwood’s doing. I really have to learn to run faster. Heh.

All right. Six things that make me happy.

1. My first cup of coffee in the morning. Strong strong coffee with milk. It’s not really lattè because the milk isn’t steamed or foamed, but I call it lattè anyway. So report me to the lattè police.
2. Taking a siesta after lunch. Piling into bed with both doggies and the Broadcasting Legend™ if he’s not on the road and drowsing deliciously through Everyday Italian and Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network.
3. Hugs from little children.
4. Going to church. Singing For All the Saints or one of the other great processionals as the scrubbed acolytes (more little children) and the choir stream into the sanctuary, and almost crying as the sopranos launch into the high, soaring descant on the last verse of the hymn.
5. Flower scents. Real flowers, not perfumes or oils. Lilies of the valley, lilacs, old-fashioned clove pinks. Our English roses—Jude the Obscure, Eglantyne, Winchester Cathedral.
6. Standing in the back yard and looking up at the sky. Picking out the constellations I learned when I was a little girl at the lake. Trying to work my mind around the inconceivable distances.
7. Opening a thick, tantalizing new book to the first page.
8. Reading Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Oh wait. That’s eight. And I haven’t even gotten to chocolate.