Distance to the moon, again

No data from last month, so I'm trying again.

Help me measure the distance to the Moon!

On the evening of 5 July 2014, the Moon will appear very close to the planet Mars.  At that time, I would like to get some help measuring the distance to the Moon.  What I need are pictures of the Moon and Mars taken at approximately the same time from as many different locations as possible.

1. Set your camera up on a tripod for best image quality.
2. Make sure that the picture you take has both all of the Moon and Mars in it, and that the focus is as good as you can make it.
3. Email me the picture along with the time you took it (+/- 5 minutes) and your location (latitude and longitude, +/- 20 miles).

It'd be best if all images could be taken at appoximately the same time. Let's make this time 04:00 UTC (which would actually make it early morning 06 July in England), which is 21:00 PDT, 22:00 MDT, 23:00 CDT, and 00:00 EDT for the United States.

Free-Form Art

I started with this:

And after a few spontaeous modifications, I stopped when this appeared before me:

So that was kinda neat so I did this pair also:

Peace

Picture For Distance To The Moon

Here's my data:

pic taken approx 04:00 UTC 6/11/14
lat: 32N
long: 110W

Figure 1: My Moon/Saturn Pic Entry (Saturn is above and to the right of the Moon)

And I took a picture of the sky without the moon in the FOV just to see what the camera can do on a nearly full moon evening.  Not bad!

Figure 2: Not too bad for a cheap camera.  Moonglow seeping in at the top.  Very cool that the horizon is red!

Distance To The Moon

Help me measure the distance to the Moon!

On the evening of 10 June 2014, the Moon will appear approximately five degrees away from the planet Saturn.  At that time, I would like to get some help measuring the distance to the Moon.  What I need are pictures of the Moon and Saturn taken at approximately the same time from as many different locations as possible.

• Set your camera up on a tripod for best image quality.
• Make sure that the picture you take has both the Moon and Saturn in it, and that the focus is as good as you can make it.
• Email me the picture along with the time you took it (+/- 5 minutes) and your location (latitude and longitude, +/- 20 miles).

It'd be best if all images could be taken at appoximately the same time.  Let's make this time 04:00 UTC (which would actually make it early morning 11 June in England), which is 21:00 PDT, 22:00 MDT, 23:00 CDT, and 00:00 EDT for the United States.

I did some test images with my little digital camera just set on 'Auto' and got some decent data looking at the Moon and Venus, and the Moon and Jupiter:

Figure 1: Moon and Venus

Figure 2: Moon and Jupiter

Email me your data (pictures) at cosmiclettuce AT yahoo DOT com.

Still Holding

Clouds and wind have conspired to bring this project to a screeching halt.

I'm seriously considering getting more into radio astronomy.

Clear and Windy

Nothing much to update.  It's been mostly clear this past week, but also windy.  Wind bumps the scope around too much which makes for useless data.  I now have an even greater appreciation for domed observatories.

Saturn at opposition yesterday, 177 degrees away from the sun.

It's about time that I start to make the plots of the data I actually want to see: brightness versus orbital phase.  Stay tuned for that.

Seeing Effects

Had a great session last night -- the first night in nearly two weeks!  My prediction that I'd get about half of the nights was very far off.  Sofar, since my Jupiter work started on 12 Feb 2014, I've had 14 observing sessions.  So that means that my "observing efficiency" is at 17.5% (14 / 80).

The surprise this evening was the seeing.  Towards the end of the session, I turned the scope to Saturn to start collecting 300 images of prelim data (I'm still assessing whether I can get "good enough" signal to noise to make the effort worthwhile) when just a little breeze blew through.  The breeze was enough to notice but it was brief and, I thought, uneventful.

However, this little breeze brought with it some nasty air!  The seeing went from really good to really bad in a matter of a couple minutes.  Check these images out of Saturn:

Figure 1: Saturn in good seeing and in bad seeing, minutes apart

Having high-resolution astronomical imaging in my background, I'm curious about these things and would like to understand them better.  I don't recall ever witnessing the seeing deteriorate so quickly.  I'd like to know what exactly causes this and how long it lasts.

I can't make a post to this blog without a nice picture of the Jupiter system from last night:

Figure 2: The Jupiter system 03:09 UTC 03 May 2014

Also some nice Jupiter moon events for May:

5/8     E eclipse R     04:06

        I eclipse R     05:52
5/11    I/E close       04:00
5/17    I/G/C close     04:00
5/18    I/E/C close     05:00
5/24    G eclipse R     03:31
        I eclipse R     04:10
05/26   C eclipse D     04:39