Tag Archives: moon

Moon over Montezuma

Posted on January 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Before I went down to Costa Rica last month I knew they eclipse was going to happen and I knew the Moon was going to be full. But I forgot all about the fact that the do some horse rides down the beach in the moonlight; I knew that from the last trip and forgot all about it. While I don’t really like horses (they’re big, scary and I don’t know how to turn them off or reboot them), down the beach during the full moon sounds pretty cool.

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This was the full moon lighting up the beach,
it’s really hard to show how bright it really was.

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It’s completely night out, but it was just so bright.

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This one came out a little brighter but it’s a little washed out.

They might have come out better if I’d had a tripod. I think it was brighter the next night (less clouds?) but my pocket camera just doesn’t appropriately show how it really looked. I don’t recall even thinking it was really bright this night, I was actually just scoping out the sky to see if the eclipse would be viewable.

And now I see someone is doing Full Moon Moon-Rise Yoga on Montezuma Beach, how cool would that be?!?

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Total Lunar Eclipse

Posted on December 21, 2010 | 4 comments

Totally worth going outside for! The eclipse was very cool looking. I’d had a long day so I’d taken a nap and set the alarm to make sure the sky cleared up enough, it did, so I got my gear together and went outside for a while.

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It looked much much redder than these shots show (since these show virtually no red). It was actually more of a dark orange with red tinting.

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Not that these shots show anything very clearly. Considering that the Moon was now “10,000 to 100,000 times fainter than it was just a couple of hours ago”* it wasn’t a big shock.

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And while I saw a few shooting stars, nothing like the meteor show I though that was supposed to be have seen once the Moon was dimmed…

In hindsight, I wouldn’t have brought the camera (or tried to shoot video), so I could have paid more attention. But then I’d have wished I had brought it, right? Actually, the tripod on the SLR probably would have been the best choice. I had it on the video camera but the video just came out too grainy ; plus, the darn Earth andMoon kept moving so I had to readjust.

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Posted in general

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LCROSS spacecraft hits the moon on it’s quest for water

Posted on October 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

I was excited to watch but the results were boring…
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Video.

Here’s the animation, which was much more interesting.
Click for a larger version of the CNN moon crash Animation.

I hope the animation is pretty much what happened, we just couldn’t see it. I hope the data that they get is good data. I’d prefer that it shows there is water;ut if there isn’t, I hope the results show there isn’t. No data / bad data means failed mission…

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) spacecraft was also passing by a little bit later (90 seconds?) so that should have have some additional data.

LATER: A little more info on this at CNN. They said this was the fifth most watched webcast ever.

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A Year Ago Today

Posted on July 23, 2009 | 1 comment

I’ve found a new WordPress plug-in that I like. It’s called “A Year Before“.

It’s got options to show a year ago today (or months or days) what you were blogging about. I’m using “anniversary mode” which I think is taking the post from today for as many years back as it can find.

Don’t worry if you haven’t been blogging long it’s got a “range” to show posts near a year ago (or six months ago). I’m running it on WordPress 2.8.2 (as of this writing) and it seems to be fine.

On This Date

2008 Best fix for my Convertible Rear Windshield
2008 MacBook Rumors seem to be rising…
2007 The Future of Television is selling me individual custom episodes
2005 Google Moon
2005 Don’t Be Afraid… Be Ready!
2004 Photos! (London)
2004 Did we walk? Boy did we walk!
2004 Cowboy Junkies and Shawn Colvin

I’ve been using it the last few days at the bottom of my left sidebar, but since I’m blogging about it I moved it to the top of the left sidebar, so you can see what it really looks like. I copied the text here so the links actually work. I’m not sure where I’ll move it to later.

It’s interesting, maybe more to me than you, but they always say you should show links to older posts for newer readers. Without even reading them I’m reminded about a trip to London (and the concert I went to a few days before) and the slideshow viewer that never detected flash properly, a homeland security site (which now appears to be a FEMA site), Google maps adding the Moon, my dreams for a new MacBook and how $5 fixed my convertible roof saving me hundreds of dollars (and save multiple readers the same!).

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Other space information in time for today’s anniversary…

Posted on July 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

I mentioned the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing earlier today. Here’s a few other “space” things that caught my eye:

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  • Apollo 11 restored HD video.
  • Send your name to Mars and get a certificate.
  • For your iPhone and iPod Touch get SkyVoyager and SkyGazer for free today (normally $17.98 combined).
  • Photos of the Moon landing sites from the LRO.
  • And Google has added the Moon to Google Earth (desktop application).

    • That’s it for now. Please post any recommended links in the comments below.

    Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

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    Posted in App Store

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    Forty Years Ago Today: We landed on The Moon!

    Posted on July 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

    On this day 40 years ago Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. astronaut_Apollo_11.jpg I’m not sure what else needs to be added to that statement: “We landed on the Moon”! How amazing is that?!?

    Just for some frame of reference: The Moon is 238,000 miles away (384,000 km), if you were driving 75 miles per hour it would take you 3,100 hours. Keep in mind that’s speeding and you don’t get to pull over for any bathroom breaks or snacks!

    Actually it took them more like five days to get there, so just dividing that out, that’s around 2,000 miles per hour (assume it took them a while to speed up and slow down).

    When I was a kid, my mother purchased me a two record set of the mission. Lots of audio recordings of the launch and landing. I’m thinking there was some insert with a bunch of photos too. I played that a lot on my record player. I don’t have any idea what year she purchased that, but I’d say I was six or seven(?), and it was amazing to me!

    It’s still amazing to me. Whenever I can watch a launch of some kind or another, I always turn on the TV and still get thrills and chills. I get chills just thinking about it as I’m writing this…

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    The sad part is we only landed six times and then we stopped.

    Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

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    Posted in me + myself + i

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    Did they cancel “How I Met Your Mother”?

    Posted on February 9, 2008 | 1 comment

    HowimetAt Amazon Unbox they have 4 FREE missing episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother’! At least I don’t think I’ve seen them before. You can download these to your Windows based computer or TiVo for free! The 4 missing episodes cover Marshal and Lily’s honeymoon…

    You can get the Infamous “Robin Sparkles” video too!

    UPDATE (Sunday evening): So I finally watched these “episodes”. They weren’t real episodes, they were just a few minutes long and they were “videos” of they’re honeymoon. They’re pretty bad too, but then again aren’t home movies supposed to be? I’m not sure what kind of promotion they shot these for, but they end with a still frame with an advertisement for the show. It was the fact that these appeared to be “lost” episodes that made me ask if the show was canceled, since these aren’t much more than some kind of odd promo/commercial I retract the original question.

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    I’ve got my tree up!

    Posted on November 25, 2007 | 1 comment

    I’ve got my Christmas tree up! It always makes me very happy to get it up, I was even happy when I got it up last night and didn’t even have ornaments on it, just the lit tree makes me happy. I always dread putting up of it and the decorating, this year I got Mom to come help with the decorating. We got it and the house done. We ate out at the Seahorse Grill (review later). We computed a little bit on her laptop. And we returned my copy of of Living Abroad in Costa Rica which it turns out I had a copy of already by a different publisher (same author) and I purchased a copy of Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette in Costa Rica. And of course, we listened to Christmas songs…

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    Posted in holidays + events

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