WOB plays "cupid" for "wingéd messenger"?

Last night:

And tonight:

That is the side of the condo on the left.

Rapid movement between Thursday and Friday. Won't push my Raven's feathers to get to tomorrow.

WOB

Moon, Venus, Mercury on Monday March 19

I came back on the Monday because I had failed to expose sufficiently long to pick up the reflected light from the Earth to the Moon and back. If I expose to see the craters I get this:

Exposing longer:

And longer still:

And now the skyscape to show how far the moon has moved in 24 hours:

and then a detail of Venus lower left of Mercury:

All this happened in March nearly a month ago. Sorry for the delay.

W O B

Sun and Moon and Venus and Mercury

I was reminded tonight at the camera club that I had not completed night sessions from Sunday March 18th

There were 7 of us on Saturday, 3 on Sunday Mar 18, 1/me on Monday Mar 19 and 3 on Tue Mar 20 (this time with no camera).

Here is what the sky looked like on Sunday March 18:

The moon was difficult to see at first.

















Matching exposures to pick up all three:

 Moon lower left,                                   Venus centre                    and Mercury between the red lines

To show how rapidly the moon moves relative to the line Venus - Mercury, I took some images from the earthobservatory blog: as seen from Spain 6 hours earlier:

by Annie Lewis in Madrid.


From Lakeland Florida:

by Michael Holland.

Mine when the moon was 34h 57m old:

The angle to the horizton is a function of the latitude of the observer - I was further north than Michael Holland in Florida.

And finally from Mike Morrison in Seattle Washington, approx 3 hours later:

So the moon does move!

W O B

Sunset over Bass Lake

It was cold - someone left the "door" open and there was a draft - 15kmh at -5C and bare heads, often, to take photos. (whoops, editor's note: bare hands - head must have been suffering hyperthermia?)

Here are some:

And then it was soon possible to see Venus lower left of Mercury:

My tripod could not take the cold any longer and its joints cracked finally after nearly 20 years of service - so the last photo was hand-held (loving care, and no shivers, my timbers of Sherwood  Forest.)

Mercury was only half the distance to Venus and had about the same angular size tonight, 10" arc seconds.

W O B
 links to Part I
and  to Part II

Venus and Mercury - Part II: Sunday March 5, 2018

The secret to taking photos of stars and planets in the twilight is to choose a long focal length, a large F/ratio and not be afraid of a fast shutter speed - like 1/125sec. The sky is bright, surface brightness is high - so anything that primarily reduces surface brightness will increase the contrast between point-like sources, planets and stars, and the background sky. Be brave and try: every camera lens has its own story.

So Vicki and I returned Sunday evening just in time to catch the sunset:

And then we were surprised - we don't read the script!

Mercury is so much closer to us than Venus is, that Mercury's apparent motion is dominant for now:
(Mercury is 1.187 AU away vs Venus' 1.655AU where 1 AU is the nominal distance of the Earth from the sun, but really 0.992AU on Sunday since the Earth was at perihelion on Jan4)  Maybe the following graphics will help. Recall that planets move counterclockwise around the Sun.)

I credit John Walker for the model of the inner solar system.
We are looking forward to March 18 when the crescent Moon will be back in the picture.

W O B

Venus and Mercury - Part I: Saturday March 4, 2018

Vicki and I attended the Couchiching Conservancy AGM in the afternoon - a great event, a great cause, and a great collection of enthusiastic people. Afterwards, the sky was still clear so we went over to Bass lake, Line 15, on the east shore with a clear view 3km to the western woods to await sunset and to then try to see Venus and Mercury.

Sunset:

Venus and Mercury:

Venus has twice the apparent diameter of Mercury:
Equatorial Diameter    Mercury = 5.67"; Venus = 10.09"
By March 24, their apparent diameters will be nearly equal. Hope that there will be some good opportunities to observe.

W O B

Why Icarus Eros and Venus?

Johannes Kepler published his laws of planetary motion around 1609. The Third Law relates the period
of an object to the size of its orbit, such that:
the square of the orbital period P is proportional to the cube of the mean distance a from the Sun (half the sum of greatest and smallest distances). In formula form

^P2= k a³

with k some constant number, the same for all planets.

It was Edmund Halley who suggested transits of Venus could be used to determine the scale but the "black drop" made the timings imprecise. Sir Harald Spencer Jones suggested the asteroid, Eros,  might work. And
during the past couple of nights Icarus was also used, more to determine its shape than to determine the scale of the solar system.

That is it for tonight - spent the day in Barrie at Paddlefest, and have some good photos for some day! This evening while looking out on the calm lake a great blue heron flew in and landed on our dock so I took its picture also for a rainy day.

I am tired bcause I have been up the past 2 mornings around 4am to photograph the sunrises - I hoped that it might be aurora but realistically just beautiful painted sunrise dawns.  I'll post them soon?

Tonorrow is the Coldwater studio tour. Weather mixed outdoors, art mixed indoors. Probably will take the camera. Have a good Sunday/einen schönen Sonntag.

W O B