Considering I took this on a smart phone camera

without a tripod, I'm terribly impressed. It is a picture of the full moon setting the other day as I was walking to work. You can even see the maria:

(Taken with a Samsung S20 5G).

Forgot

it was full moon until I saw it come out from some clouds out my window. I never tire of the moon's spell.

If you're awake and it's nighttime

Go outside and see how close Jupiter and the moon are together tonight (and yay,  I knew it was Jupiter even before checking with the Sky Map application on my phone.) :)

Hmmm...we might have some cloud cover

CC Peter2006son

How To Watch Sunday's Rare Supermoon Eclipse, The Last For Almost 20 Years

Sunday's Rare Celestial Event: Will Forecast Hamper Your View of Supermoon, Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse? [includes a map of rain and clouds superimposed over the United States].

I do wish they'd just dispense with this supermoon business, as the perfectly decent scientific term is perigee. The sad thing is I had to link to the Supermoon article at Wikipedia, as Perigee redirects to Apogee, which is the term for the furthest the moon is in its orbit from planet Earth. Oh, well. Here's hoping we get to see it clearly tomorrow!

Then there's this one, too

You can see both Earth and Moon.  Yay! (PS, the only alteration on the screenshots was that I mucked with a couple of the icons in the folders for the finances folder. You don't really need to know who I bank with, etc.)

I took this last night

I still don't have a camera that can take a perfect picture of a full moon, but this was pretty nice. Tonight it should be even more full and stunning, as the moon is at perigee, closest to the earth for the year. When it rises at dusk, it's huge. This was near midnight, when it was high in the sky, but the clouds came out nicely. I thought you might enjoy it.



Okay, I think I'm going to eat something, take a hopefully short nap, and then work some on the house. Have a great day!

Nice to see they named it after her

NASA's Grail probes crash on moon; impact site named after Sally Ride

One year after their arrival at the moon, NASA's twin Grail spacecraft got a grand sendoff into oblivion, climaxing with a well-orchestrated crash onto a crater's rim. The place where they crashed will be named after Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, who passed away this summer.

Ride was in charge of the Grail mission's MoonKam project, which let students from around the world select targets for the probes' cameras. MIT's Maria Zuber, the mission's principal investigator, announced just after today's double whammy that her team received clearance from NASA to name the crash site after Ride.

"Sally was all about getting the job done, whether it be in exploring space, inspiring the next generation, or helping make the Grail mission the resounding success it is today," Zuber said in a NASA news release. "As we complete our lunar mission, we are proud we can honor Sally Ride's contributions by naming this corner of the moon after her."

By the way

I caught the full moon in clouds the other night. It's not what I call a clear picture of the moon, but it's kind of misty and mysterious looking:

Have you been watching the sky?

Planets Align Tonight: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars & Moon To Appear

The waxing crescent moon, Jupiter, and Venus have been very close together the last few days and tonight lined up around sunset. Meanwhile, Mars was rising across the sky in the west. I've been keeping an eye on the sky, enjoying the show, and tonight was no exception.

The sad thing is there are many people who never bother to look up at the wonderful world above them.

Did you see this?

One Librarian's Mission: To Locate American Flags On The Moon

Annie Platoff, a librarian at UC Santa Barbara, is on a mission to find out what happened to the American flags that astronauts planted on the moon during the six lunar landings.

Platoff's research pinpointed four of them, including the one from Apollo 17, the final lunar mission. At the very least, the nylon national symbols are "tattered" and have "darkened" over the years. She speculates that the other two, planted during Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, fell victim to the ignition gases emitted from the lunar module during blast-off.

The moon has a ring around it tonight

I wish I had a camera that could take a proper picture. I love it when I look up and see that.

Eureka!

Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water

Google is celebrating with a moon-themed logo. I think it's the same one from when NASA blew up the dust in the first place, last month.

Whimsy

The moon rather reminds me of Dick Cheney in looks (and in being full of hot air), but it comes through in the end. Thanks to Cory over at Voyages Extraordinaires for the link to the video.

Be sure to catch the moon tonight

Saturday night special: Biggest full moon of '09: Moon will be nearly full, rising earlier Friday night and later Sunday night

Basically it will be at perigee, the closest point to Earth this year. We're supposed to have clouds for rain and snow, but I hope it peeks out at some point tonight.

Venus + Jupiter + the Moon = a wonderful conjunction (that smiles or frowns depending on where you are)

This is from Thailand (I love the singing--it was fun--so I used this one). In Asia and Australia the image was of a smiley face. Here in America it was an upside down face that seemed to frown. Try AstroEngine for more information from this continent and an overview of the conjunction itself. In Western Europe one planet was occulted briefly, too (I think it was Venus being occulted by the Moon, but don't quote me.) I didn't see it last night, but I saw the moon pretty close to the planets tonight, and it was still wonderful.

Okay, I know my camera is a very basic one

and doesn't really take sharp photos--especially of things in the sky, but the moon tonight looks like a giant dragon's eye with the way the clouds were reflecting its light, and you can see a little of what I mean in the following photo.



PS Speaking of the moon, I just have to write a note on Kid Rock's song 'All Summer Long'...I know technically 'shined' is a past tense of 'shine' just like 'shone'--and maybe that works for nouns like 'light' (although I would says 'he shined the light' but 'the light shone', but it just does not work so much for 'moon'); 'the moonlight shone upon her hair', rather than 'shined' sounds so much better. Check how many times 'moon shone' pops up in Google vs. 'moon shined', for example. General English usage puts 'moon' with 'shone'. I have only heard 'moon shined' twice in my life, both recently, once in the song and once on an advertisement. It just sounds afflicted, even if technically I can't prove it 'wrong', but maybe I'm too old school. Maybe it's a regional thing (he's from Michigan, I'm from the South). I don't know. I like the song (it's very catchy and sticks in your mind, among other things), but this just bugs me. :) Oh, well, my grammar's not perfect; I probably shouldn't complain. But hey, what's the use of a blog if you can't rant once in awhile?

The sky is beautiful and full of stars

as a setting gibbous moon hangs overhead.

It's been a decent day in general, I suppose. I was finally able to place an order through our new computerised materials management system at work, but the Internet connexion fizzled this afternoon, too. My best self-quote of the day: 'I make a good beta tester; I'm a problem magnet.' This was mitigated with breakfast for lunch today (my favourite meal, not only for its content, but its cheapness--my whole meal was $2.10). But it took care of some of the frustration, although I found the main task sans Internet for me to do was go over the e-mails that had piled up in my inbox during my vacation, which I had been somewhat avoiding--just skimming for the important ones.

I signed up to renew my AAA membership today. They take out our dues from our paycheques in two instalments in November, always with the code 'flower fund'. :)

After work, I paid my rent, then had a nap between jobs. It wasn't long but was refreshing. I had the window open and the fan blowing on me.

I spent nearly every moment at job #2, except for checking in the truck and my 10-minute break, in the cooler organising and stocking, trying to remove as many boxes and crates as possible. Like everything else about the store, the cooler is way too small for the product we keep in there, so that means getting creative in stacking sometimes. The two of us who are regular second-shifters were off yesterday and the day before, with those borrowed from other stores filling in, so I don't think the cooler was really done that well, or at least they weren't able to find everything that needed stocking. I was frozen by the time I got home, although not as cold as the girls who were working out front. They're small and don't have the fat layer I have. I can be working in the cooler with the fans running full for awhile without really losing that much heat. But tonight was longer than usual.

Then it was over to YKWIA's to read more of Lumley. We're doing two chapters a night right now. I didn't get over there until after 10 because he was watching 'Supernatural' and didn't want to be disturbed, so I was over there pretty late. Plus, I watched a little of Keith Olbermann whilst I was there, since I enjoy his show [what can I say, I'm liberal to a fault and so I like it. Did you know he was raised a Unitarian? That was the last and only type of church I'd belong to. I left only because they harangued for money too much, but I still agree with the ideals.] He had Sarah Silverman on. She'd done a video urging Jews to schlep over to Florida and convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. What can I say, it's something only she could pull off, I suspect. They didn't show the whole thing on TV (and I can see why) but it's pure Sarah (so you know there are expletives, right?)

Anyways, so I'm just now getting home. My shoes are off, I've eaten a few pretzels, and it's off to bed. 'Night.

Watching the moon

I didn't quite get outside to see the height of the eclipse, but I did manage to see the sliver of it coming back. The moon wasn't red like other ones I've seen--it was just dark, as if it were new moon. That's so neat, but weird and vaguely wrong at the same time. Hope you got to see the show.

[PS 3/3/08--If you didn't get to see it, or if you'd just like a quick recap, check out this time-lapse video.]

I hope the weather's good

for Wednesday's total eclipse of the moon.

Beautiful, I'm sure; I'm looking forward to it

Red Planet Outshines Red Nose: Mars Shines Its Brightest Around Midnight