22 September 2014

I celebrated the equinox today by going to the Sun Triangle for the alignment. The alignment must have been yesterday because when I arrived at 1245 the shadow was already well past the gnomon. I made a couple of pinhole images and some light field images anyway.

21 September 2014

This schematic is something I developed a couple of years ago to help me identify the stars of the Pleiades and it has been hanging out here as a draft all this time waiting for another Pleiades observation. So I decided it was time to publish it. And it won't be long before the Pleiades is once again visible in the night sky.

		Asterope 5.76
Pleioe 5.05		Sterope 6.44
Atlas 3.63 & 6.63
	Alcyone 2.86 & 6.29	Maia 3.88 & 3.88	Taygeta 4.30 & 8.10
			Celaeno 5.46 & 7.46
	Merope 4.17	Electra 3.71 & 5.71
	brightest
	faintest

21 September 2014

I am just reading a BBC article about this years Ig Noble awards wherein they explain the research relating to the awarding of this year's neuroscience Ig Noble to a team from the University of Toronto for research into pareidolia.

Pareidolia is the well known--to everyone but me--phenomena   whereby our brains to try and derive or create order out of disorder.  One of the examples they cite is people seeing the face of Christ in the burn pattern on a slice of toast.

Other instances, some less well-known, which I think fall under this umbrella are:

• The Turin Shroud
• Shapes in murmurations
• Shapes in clouds
• The constellations and asterisms
• The face on Mars
• The Man in the Moon
• The Old Crone in the Moon
• The Rabbit in the Moon
And, yes,
• The Black Cat in the Moon
• The Black Sheep in the Moon

19 September 2014

It looks like Summer has taken early retirement. At 1300 the temperature was still below 60° F.

I went over to Bryant Park to experiment with taking pictures of the Sun with the digiscope adapter. It isn't as easy as it seems. First I found that the FoV would be white even when there was no Sun present. I think I was seeing oblique light rather than the sun. I hadn't zoomed in so was looking at the entire FoV with vignetting around it thinking that I was actually seeing the disk of the Sun and wasn't understanding why I wasn't able to focus it. Then when I got home and was setting the camera up for more macro photography of my carnivorous plant I realized that I had it set to Aperture Priority and f/11 which is why I had to dial in +3 stops of exposure compensation to get a gray image. I am going to have to experiment a lot more before the eclipse next month but think I need to start with terrestrial objects and once I figure out the digiscoping with them move up to the Sun.

18 September 2014

I had an alarm set to go out and make an observation tonight and I have a vague recollection of shutting it off and looking at the clock and saying I had some time before I actually needed to get up.  Then I was fully awake and it was time to go out and I was not dressed and the tripod was still set up for macro photography.  I checked MoonMap HD and it said that the terminator was running from the Black Sheep in the Moon's right ear down to the tip of his snout.

MoonMap HD graphic

Without a head the Black Sheep in the Moon's body is just another dark splotch so I am saying he is not visible at this age of the Moon.
Virtual Moon Atlas has a little bit different take on things placing the terminator along the line of the top of his head, through his right eye, and along the top of his left ear, but that makes the left ear disappear and for me that left ear is what calls attention to the animal.

Virtual Moon Atlas graphic

17 September 2014

The Black Cat in the Moon is well into the shadows.  The Black Sheep in the Moon is still there but it took a bit for me to find him.  The terminator is right on the edge of Bullialdus and I suspect that it will be covering at least part of the Black Sheep in the Moon's head tomorrow.

annotated LunarMap HD graphic

annotated Virtual Moon Atlas graphic

16 September 2014

Most of the Black Cat in the Moon is in shadow tonight.  His left eye and right ear are right on the terminator.  His right eye and right cheek are still in sunlight but everything else is gone.  Kind of like a Cheshire Cat.  If you didn't know what to look for and where to look for it you wouldn't see him at all.  So I am going to say that he is not there any longer.

The Black Sheep in the Moon is still there and will probably last another two days but two days from now the twilight might be too bright to make him out from here.