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!!!!!