Look! Up in the Sky!
I missed the Aurora, but...
Hello Friends,
There was a lot of celestial action this week.
Unfortunately, I was travelling, and so I missed the recent solar storm that created the amazing photos that maybe many of you have seen recently. My wife got several wonderful shots. One with the Big Dipper clearly in view.
I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights. Over the years, I've tried several times near my home, but I have been unsuccessful. I have since learned that they are way more dramatic when you look at them through a phone camera.
The one thing that I have been lucky about capturing is comets. My first adventure was in 1997, when I was living in New York City. The Hale Bopp comet appeared over Manhattan.
I was living on the Lower East Side, in Alphabet City, and I got on to my building’s roof (bravely walking past the “Do Not Go On Roof!!” sign) and witnessed it hanging over the Empire State Building. Remarkably, I could see it clearly with all the NYC light pollution.
I took pictures that night, but I can't find them. I found this shot from https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap970326.html. It's kind of what I saw. But, I was actually in Manhattan. This view is from across the East River.
More recently, in 2020, I saw and made a photograph of comet NEOWISE.
And, this week, I snagged Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS:
This comet comes from the Oort Cloud, an area in our solar system that is beyond Pluto. It has a large elliptical orbit and only passes by Earth every 80,000 years. Truly a once in a lifetime event.
But, for me, the infrequency is not the cool part. The cool part is just seeing the thing and being able to have a photo of it. It was barely visible to me without a telephoto lens or binoculars. But, I could still see it, if I tried—my eyes are old. My son saw it easily. It is visible for another week—in the West, just after the setting sun.
We have comets flying around our planet all the time. If you use an app, like I do, called Star Walk 2, you can identify comets and other things, such as planets, stars, constellations, and meteor showers.
The reason we don't see this stuff all the time is two-fold:
we have too much light pollution (I'm not getting into that pile of mud)
only when comets get close to the sun and start to melt do they produce the long tail that they are known for.
In this shot, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, had already spun past the sun and was good and melty (like a grilled cheese sandwich). Also, it was at its closest to Earth. Because of these factors, the comet was visible with a long tail.
Really cool.
Oh, and there is a super moon tonight. I caught it almost-super last night, rising. Check it out tonight. It’s pretty big and pretty.
Happy reading, writing, and observing.
David
David: I think you might be one of the few people who look up in NYC, unless there's a helicopter dipping in and out of your neighborhood chasing a suspect of some kind. I've missed many full moons in the city because there's so much going on — light pollution, processions of military aircraft flying low along the Hudson River during Fleet Week, skyscrapers blocking views, and all that happens at the ground level, etc. It's good to be reminded to look up. Last night, as you say, there was an amazingly bright full moon and early this morning, also. We self-involved mortals, for the sake of our humility, need to feel the vastness of the universe overhead. Recently my short story group just read a story where a glance up at the sky in NYC changed an elderly woman's life. It was "Key" by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and well worth seeking it out.