It's been a rainy few months here in the Northwest. Needless to say, I haven't been doing much astronomy, except on three perfect nights, when I imaged comet Holmes and Mars (see photos below). Even missed the Geminids and Ursids!!!
After getting over a bout of bronchitis since mid-November, I thought I might visit my daughter, who lives about an hour south of me. But the bug flared up again last week, so it will be a quiet Christmas here at home. (Didn't even decorate this year....although my Christmas "decorating" usually consists of an electric red-and-green candle in the front window. Who knows....it's Christmas eve...I still might plug it in!)

Merry Christmas to all of you.

Jim

Mars is at it's closest approach to Earth tomorrow (18th). Today it was cloudy and rainy...even a little sleet! Around 8 o'clock tonight, the skies started to clear and there were some clouds hovering above the southern horizon. (Here in the northwest, the weather usually comes from the south or west). After monitoring the sky, using my all-sky camera, I decided to take a chance and set up my small (5") telescope and maybe get some video of the red planet.
I hustled to set up the scope, level and align it, point at Mars, set up the camera, laptop computer, focus. Ten minutes later, those seemingly benign clouds blew in and the sky was almost completely clouded over. No video. Oh, well. And on top of that, the forecast is for rain all this week! Oh, well. There's always next week....maybe.

On Saturday, a blast of cold arctic air hit us with about 1/2" of snow. Today, the temperature warmed up to almost 60 with heavy rains and wind. Because there was so much snow accumulation in the mountains and higher foothills around Puget Sound, all of the rivers are flooding. Many areas south of me (Everett, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Seattle) are encountering flooded streets, mudslides, closed highways and rail lines.

Up here in Marysville, it hasn't been too bad, although we did get an inch of rain since midnight last night (1" in 12 hours!) This is the rain graph from my on-site weather station here at Meadowcreek Park Observatory.....(the red line is midnight, and each green "spike" is the hourly rainfall)...

Needless to say, I haven't done any astronomy lately!!!!!

Spent some time with Mars last night. Very beautiful. The Moon was out, big and bright, washing out all but the brightest stars. I knew that Mars wouldn't be high enough in the sky to see from inside MPO until around 10:30, so I got things set up before the sun went down, then went back outside around 9:30 to get started. (That way, I don't have to spend 4+ hours in sub-freezing temps!!!)
I took several video sequences of the Red Planet. I have software that will align and stack the individual frames from the video to create a high-quality still image. The image below was created from 600 video frames:

Gee...wouldn't you know...after clouds and rain for the past couple of weeks, it clears up for a perfect Thanksgiving. Still cold, though...only 48 degrees. The temp dropped to 21 last night.

I'm going to get the scope set up for a Mars imaging session tonight. Hopefully, no fog. (It stayed nice and clear last night, so tonight should be the same).

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Waiting for Mars (26 degrees!).....

Worth the wait...

While the Japanese KAGUYA spacecraft is currently orbiting the Moon, and sending back some incredible HDTV images of the lunar surface (including recent footage of Earthrise and Earthset),http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHuRRDshhg

the Chinese have successfully placed their own probe into lunar orbit.
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/First_China_Lunar_Probe_To_Activate_Observation_Payloads_On_Monday_999.html

In other related news, Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) and the Indian Department of Space have signed a joint lunar research and exploration agreement:
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Russia_And_India_Sign_Joint_Lunar_Research_Deal_999.html

It sure looks like the next 10 years will be pretty exciting (and crowded) for ol' Luna!!!!!

Some of you have asked me how far comet Holmes is from Earth. Silly me....I've been so interested in monitoring it's brightness and size, that I haven't really paid much attention to it's distance....until last night.
According to Starry Night software, it reached it's closest distance to Earth on November 5, at
150,687,900 miles.

November 16: 151,776,000 miles.
December 16: 168,181,200 miles.
January 16: 203,502,600 miles.
February 16: 249,965,400 miles.
March 16: 296,372,400 miles.

In other words, it is getting farther from Earth...and the Sun. Comet Holmes is on it's journey back out of our Solar System.

As of this writing, the size of the coma (debris cloud) is 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) in diameter....larger than the Sun!!!!!!! Not too shabby for a comet with a nucleus of only about 2 miles in diameter!!!

We can't see any tail from the comet, because comet tails ALWAYS point AWAY from the Sun, and we are almost directly between the Sun and the comet. The tail is actually behind the comet from our perspective.

My son and his family were in the Seattle area, visiting from Mississippi this weekend, so I had the opportunity to spend the day with them yesterday (Monday). We spent the day at the Seattle Center, watched a 3-D movie in the IMAX theater, then visited with my oldest daughter and her 5 kids in Federal Way.
It isn't very often that I get to spend some quality time with 8 of my 11 grandchildren! (In June, it will be 12).

It's Fall in the Northwest, and the weather is, well.....fallish. That is to say, cold, cloudy, windy and rainy. Being an amateur astronomer in this neck of the woods is a little frustrating. It seems that every time I purchase a new piece of equipment (camera, telescope, software) it rains for at least a week. As a matter of fact, about a week ago, I built a weather-proof case for my All-Sky Camera. I use the camera to monitor the sky for meteors. It was clear for a few nights, then it clouded up and has been lousy for viewing since.

I did manage to get a shot of Comet Holmes on a clear night. This has been an interesting comet to watch. It started out not even visible to the naked eye, then literally overnight, it flared up to naked eye visibility. This image was taken with a CCD camera and a 135 mm zoom lens, mounted on my 10" telescope, which was tracking the sky. This is a 15-minute exposure taken on November 5.....