It’s Pie Day! We had a sell-by-date supermarket quiche with a ham pi on top. And here is the moon balanced on a branch. We got up before dawn to watch an eclipse but all we saw were clouds.
Category: Astronomy
Tit for Tat
A random bird for lack of better photos. Apparently there are all seven planets on view tonight but it’s cloudy and we can only see Jupiter. It was a grey day too, but it’s also Gray Day so A2 is reading Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray.
A Clear Sky
At last, a cloudless sky with Venus, Mars and Jupiter all shining brightly. And the Moon rises.
A1 is rereading Want You Gone by Chris Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The Return by Hakan Nesser.
Snowy Sunday
We’ve had 13cm of snow today and next-door’s kids have made a very traditional snowperson on the traffic island.
The family slogged here through the wintry weather for a dinner of meat loaf with potatoes, sprouts and pico pizzas for the mini people, followed by a reprise of last year’s Christmas pudding ice cream bombe.
We missed the Quadrantids and yesterday evening’s occultation of Saturn by the Moon due to the miserable weather. And oh dear, we scored 7 on the first GSQ of the year. The snow is turning to rain and we’ve registered over 50mm so far this month. Things can only get wetter.
New Year New Moon
On her way home A2 spotted this delicate crescent moon hanging in the darkening sky with Venus floating above.
Here is A1’s effort, taken with crater accuracy.
A1 is reading The Traitor by Jorn Lier Horst. A2 is reading City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan.
First Light
A2, woken by Mars glaring at her through the window, got up to look for Mercury. Did not see it (it was probably behind a tree) but was enchanted by the colours of the sky.
A2 is reading The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter.
Spot the Sun
This morning was very foggy so A1 was able to photograph the sun’s face though the murk. It had a few small spots but was looking pretty good for its encounter with the Parker Solar Probe.
On the left is an annotated picture from SpaceWeather for comparison.
Lickety Spit
The cats being friendly, for a change. It’s the Geminids tonight, but in keeping with the rest of the year we’ve had unrelieved gloom. Tomorrow night looks like it might be better, but there’ll be a nearly full moon.
A2 is reading Locked In* by Jussi Adler Olsen. Department Q’s lead detective is jailed and beset by assassins on all sides for fearsomely complicated reasons.
Moon Meets Mars
Full Moon, Corona, Jupiter
The full Moon surrounded by a colourful corona, with Jupiter on the right. There are Leonid meteors around now, but the glare makes them very hard to spot (sneer at the link’s “rare celestial spectacles” — they happen every year).
We had seasonally appropriate bangers and mash for dinner. And we’re looking forward to (allegedly) nine hours of heavy snow from midnight on Tuesday.
A1 is reading The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe. A2 is reading Polostan by Neal Stephenson.
Don’t the Moon Look Good, Mama, Shining through the Trees
Shine on Beaver Moon, last of four supermoons in a row.
A2 is reading The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe, a mystery story in three different genres set in the Truss days and featuring an incredibly hard-drinking old woman detective; an absolute delight. Thank you, thank you A1.
Up, Up and Away
Goodbye Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, seen at last in the far distance as it heads back to the Oort Cloud. Sorry we missed you in your full glory.
Pink Moon
A gibbous moon floating nonchalantly on the shoulders of a filmy cloud that has prevented us from seeing the comet once again.
A1 is rereading Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler. A2 is rereading Brasyl by Ian McDonald.
An Aurora at Last!
In the wee hours of this morning, as A1 was suffering from cold, flu or covid and A2 was wakeful with worry, the aurora alert shot up to a high level (thanks to those charged particles from the CME; see below)
To the naked eye there was only a hint of red high up but a photo revealed the green wavy curtains
It was a wonderful thing to see, at least on the screen, after so many nights of staring at black skies and taking black photographs. See the stars!
Saucy Tomato
The toms in our garden are ripening at last, and this one is blushing with shame.
A1 is reading Enlightenment by Sarah Perry. A2 is rereading Archangel by Robert Harris.
Comet Update
More from SOHO, with yet another CME (the speckles are high-energy particles hitting the camera):
The Comet Approaches
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is on its way. The image below was taken by the sun-researching SOHO spacecraft, and shows the comet moving into its field of view. Also captured is a solar flare, which — when the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) hits the comet later today or tomorrow — may disrupt the comet’s tail. CMEs also cause auroras when they reach Earth. The weather is looking clearish for sunset time from 10 Oct, when the comet should start to become visible from here. Here’s hoping.
A1 is reading The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, thus finishing A1’s immensely pleasurable tour through NP’s oeuvre (A1 really needed some distraction during recent events). TMH is a cheerful SF tale clearly playing homage to Terry Pratchett (complete with amusing footnotes). The SF elements can be a little ropey, but the writing is so splendidly enjoyable that it’s forgivable. It’s baffling why her previous publisher (Bloomsbury) refused the book and dropped her completely … she’s clearly a terrific writer with much left to say.
A2 is reading Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming.
Partial Lunar Eclipse
After a cloudless day, the clouds rolled in after midnight and there were only a few small gaps at 3:20am when an eclipse was due. Fortunately one of these gaps let the Moon peep through, and we saw the (very! — 8%) partial eclipse.
Fittingly, A1 is reading Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd.
Sun Spots
A1 photographed the sun through the clouds today and revealed several sunspots. Mouse over the image for a comparison photo taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite at around the same time.
A2 is reading Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (thx A1).
Fried Alaska
Our attempt at making individual baked Alaskas in the air fryer as a coda to our family lunch of porky veg and rice. It worked very well so here is the recipe:
Cut a shop-bought Swiss roll into 6 pieces and put each piece in an empty Gü pot.
Fill pots to top with shop-bought ice cream.
Beat 2 egg whites with 40g of caster sugar until stiff and spoon on top of each pot.
Put pots in freezer until after dinner, then air fry at 200° for 3 minutes.
Caramba!
We did 2 weeks’ worth of quizzes and scored 12 in one and 10.5 in the other so still in double figures.
A1 is reading Strindberg’s Star* by Jan Wallentin, a kind of halfhearted attempt at a Swedish version of Katherine Neville’s The Eight: a conspiracy involving ancient artefacts with many real-life characters and events dragged in (the titular Strindberg and his brother, Himmler, Fritz Haber, Nobel, Swedenborg, etc etc). But unlike KN’s splendidly enjoyable effort, JW gives us an incoherent plot and a useless and uninvolving protagonist, and poor writing (not helped by a US translation). Rubbish — but not entertaining rubbish, sadly.
A2 is reading Hazards of Time Travel* by Joyce Carol Oates; a boring and pointless novel in which a bolshy teenager from an ultra-authoritarian USA is punished by being transported to the 1950s.
What We Missed
Last night was one of the best aurora displays of the past 500 years, easily visible from here. But we slept through it.
Sight of the Night: Comet 12P Pons-Brooks
Happy Easter Saturday everyone! This tiny green fuzzy blob, photographed by A1, is the Mother of Dragons.
Jupiter Collapsing
A2 went to town today and was surprised to see the solar system up there, though Jupiter had had an unfortunate implosion. Turns out it was part of an Easter space extravaganza.
A2 is reading Sanctuary by Dave Hutchinson, set in a postdiluvian feudal society but nonetheless centred on police action against a serial killer. Most of the non-genre novels I have read during my fast have featured crimes.
Night
After our family dinner of roast chicken and pannettone pudding, at which we scored a pathetic 7.5 on the GSQ, we went out to look for comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and with faint hopes of an aurora. Sadly we saw neither.
A1 is reading Brandenburg by Henry Porter.
We are watching 3 Body Problem.
Moon of Ramadan
The Moon is wearing a veil of cloud and Jupiter is standing by.
A1 is reading Better the Blood* by Michael Bennett, a somewhat right-on tale of delayed revenge for the heinous maltreatment of the indigenous Māori population of New Zealand Aotearoa. A2 is rereading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell.
Wolf Moon
Full Moon in a corona on a blustery night. Since Storm Gerrit, we have had Storm Henk and Storm Isha and now it’s Storm Jocelyn’s turn.
A1 is rereading Why We Die by Mick Herron. A2 is rereading the magnificent Bel Canto* by Ann Patchett (the * denotes it is a library book but we have a copy somewhere in the house along with two other Mick Herron books which we also can’t find). Terrorists and hostages brought together by music.
Belt of Venus
The Belt of Venus is the pinkish area in the centre of the picture. The darker blueish area below is the shadow of the Earth, rising as the Sun sets.
A1 is reading Too Close to Breathe* by Olivia Kiernan. A2 is reading The Snow Girl* by Javier Castillo; a dogged reporter on the case of a lost child.