September

Hello! Here are a variety of snapshots from the desert, around the garden and of the sky.

I've been noticing new needles sprouting on the tops of some young saguaros. It seems that the new spines start out reddish in color before turning light grey. Most of the saguaros around here are too tall to see their tops.

The barrel cacti are blooming!

Hard to see, but there's a metallic green bee crawling out of the red flower.

The two pictures below look almost monochromatic except for the dove's pinkish legs and feet.

A tiny toad on my patio:

Indian Mallows pop up all around the garden. I planted one from the nursery many years ago and now there are about a dozen. I like their soft velvety leaves.

An Albert's towhee has been visiting the backyard this month, usually hopping around in the shadows, but for a second it posed on a chair in the sunlight.

Jupiter and the Moon 9/20/14  5:56am

Orion, Sirius and Jupiter 9/27/14  4:43am

Clouds over Tucson 9/20/14  7:11am

H a p p y  W e e k e n d !

Skywatch Night and Day

Here are a few sky snapshots from the past two weeks. The nighttime scenes didn't show up in my photos nearly as well as seeing them in person. Maybe I should have used a tripod.

Recently there were two conjunctions about a week apart where the moon and planets appeared close together in the sky.  The first trio had Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon:

Venus - Jupiter - moon 8/23/14 5:32 am

The next conjunction was Mars, Saturn and the moon. It almost looked like a smiley face in the sky. It's hard to see but there was even a star for the nose named Zubinelgenubi.

Mars - Saturn - moon 8/30/14 8:59 pm

The next night the moon appeared  above Mars and Saturn forming a tighter triangle than the previous evening.

Mars - Saturn - moon  8/31/14 9:03 pm

This is what the Mars, Saturn, moon conjunction looked like from the neighborhood except the moon was more like a crescent instead of a large white dot:

Mars - Saturn - moon  8/31/14 9:03 pm

Here I zoomed in just on the moon:

waxing crescent 8/31/14 7:54 pm

The appearance of the constellation Orion in the eastern predawn sky marks the change of seasons. In the photo below, Orion is at the right and the three stars of his belt point down to Sirius, the dog star of Canis Major, the brightest star of the night sky.

Orion and Sirius 8/24/14 4:42 am

Even though it was getting light out I could still see Orion. Notice the reddish star on the left side of the constellation, that is Betelgeuse standing in for the hunter's right shoulder. If you are up before sunrise this month look southeast for Orion and the dog star, Sirius.

Orion and Sirius 8/24/14 5:23 am

Now for some clouds:

Linking to Skywatch Friday.

H a p p y   S k y w a t c h i n g !

Snapshots of the Sky

Here are some sky pictures from the past week.

sunrise 8/19/2013 5:40am

Full "blue" moon with clouds on Wednesday:

moon 8/21/2013 5:11am

Thursday:

moon and mesquite tree  8/22/2013 5:58am

8/22 moon closer up - nice light golden color

 My son called last evening to tell me that the moon was glowing red:

moon 8/22/2013 8:16pm

red oval-shaped moon

The moon this morning with a dark sky:

moon  8/23/2013 4:16am

and a blue sky:

moon 8/23/2013 6:05am

Also this morning, even with a cloudy sky I could see the planet Jupiter and the Orion constellation to the east just before sunrise.

I'm pretty sure the two red colored dots are the stars Betelgeuse (Orion's shoulder) and Aldebaran (the fiery eye of Taurus the bull).

8/23/2013 5:14am

And finally, here's an interesting cloud from last Friday:

clouds 8/16/2013 6:46pm

It looks like the gray color was brushed onto the white cloud with a huge paint brush.

cloud close up with Vitex tree branch

Visit Skywatch Friday to view skies from around the world.

Skywatching

So far this week:

Clouds on Monday

moon with clouds

white-winged dove on saguaro

black throated sparrow on ocotillo

agave

followed by clear enough skies to see the trio of planets Tuesday after sundown

Mercury, Venus, Jupiter  5/28/2013

and again on Wednesday (sort of)

5/29/2013

and the moon this morning.

 Check out more sky pictures from around the world at Skywatch Friday.

Have a nice weekend!

Venus Transit

From our backyard with our homemade viewer we were able to capture the silhouette of Venus during its transit across the sun.

Then we attended a free Transit of Venus event at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort where various activities and telescopes were set up

and cultural astronomer Richard Poss gave an interesting lecture.

I thought this little wooden "Sunspotter" telescope was really neat.  It uses a system of three mirrors and two lenses inside a triangle that can rotate on the semicircular base.

     

The image projected onto white paper was clear and easy to view.

These are reflections of the event on windows and a screen which had live video feed from NASA:

Back home again, we took a picture through a filter:

The next transit of Venus will be in 2117.

See more sky posts from around the world at Skywatch Friday.