Penultimate Post

Time to travel a bit before the calendar turns another notch in our collective lives. I am off to Las Vegas in a few days for some time with a mini-quorum of my poker buddies. Will also be catching up with a lot of former poker media friends at the WPBT Winter Classic. All-in-all a week to ten days in the desert.

After Vegas I will not be immediately returning to the Berkeley apartment because a major remodeling process will begin while I am in Las Vegas; considering the holidays the entire project will take about a month and then I will be re-inhabiting a very upgraded living space. I have been packing and moving out for the last week or so; yet another opportunity to divest myself of accumulated stuff.

So after the time in the desert, I suspect I will return to the Bay area, check on the state of the construction in the apartment and then do some holiday visitations. Weather will be a big determining factor for where I will be mid-month, I really want to position myself for a clear view of the solstice lunar eclipse on the 21st.

Also my friends in Mt Shasta will be heading off to visit relatives and I am once again the house/cat-sitter designee. So at some point I will make the northern trek to Siskiyou County where I will remain until after the new year hath dawned on what I suspect will be a very fluid 2011.
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photo: another NASA moon

Morning Has Broken

There was a full moon visible over San Francisco Bay this morning just after dawn. Before dawn I had noticed a ever so slight glow in the cloud cover and remembered the full moon that had been completely obliterated last night would not be setting until late this morning. Then just after dawn the cloud cover opened to reveal a bright shiny orb. 

A few minutes after I snapped that shot, the clouds closed again. We shall assume the moon sank from view even without benefit of human confirmation.

I wanted to remind everyone one last time before I take a blog break that there will be a total lunar eclipse on December 21st, should make for some energetic solstice celebrations. I will be somewhere in Northern California about that time, depending on the overcast predictions I may try to position myself for a clear view of the lunar blackout.

Oh and have a big bird on Thursday or Friday or whenever you gather with your creche.

If the Sun Sets in the Darkness . . .

This is the view from my window this morning, which provides you with all the information you need about the moonset early this morning. Unfortunately the weather predictors are not encouraging about our chances for more celestial dazzlement this week. The much anticipated full moon settling over San Francisco will occur this Friday and Saturday, which as you can see below is not apparently going to be prime viewer weather.

TODAY	TOMORROW	THU	FRI	SAT	6-10 DAY
Partly Cloudy	Sunny	Partly Cloudy	Few Showers	Showers	Extended Forecast
High: 73° Low: 51°	High: 69° Low: 50°	High: 62° Low: 51°	High: 64° Low: 51°	High: 65° Low: 52°

The first sunset through the Golden Gate narrows happened yesterday, you will not notice in my shot below any sort of bridge or the golden opening to the Pacific. A near fifty mile long fog bank crept in during the late afternoon yesterday to fill San Francisco Bay from end to end.

I would mention one final time that I really am fond of this type of weather. The rain and fog are fascinating for me, my spirits are lifting by the damp and chilled weather, it's like be wrapped in a cocoon the size of the universe. Sounds are muffled, perceptions shrink and we are forced to go on internal sensors. Perhaps in the next few days we will get a glimpse of the astronomical workings between the clouds, if not, I shall attempt to entertain and minister from the internal microcosm.

Pinprick holes in a colourless sky

Let insipid figures of light pass by

The mighty light of ten thousand suns

Challenges infinity and is soon gone

Night time, to some a brief interlude

To others the fear of solitude

Brave Helios, wake up your steeds

Bring the warmth the countryside needs

Moody Blues The Day Begins

from Days of Future Passed

A Little Lunar Physics

With my celestial gazing blotted out by the grey weather again last night, I turn to a bit of chat about astronomical angles with some solar/lunar synchronicity tossed in for leavening. As I am sure most of you know, but may not often contemplate, the moon has no light of its own. Earth's satellite is a reflective surface, what we see as the illuminated moon is completely solar energy cast back at us.

So when we see or don't see the new moon, it is because the moon is between the earth and the sun. All the light of the sun is on the far side of the moon, which contrary to what Pink Floyd is thought to have said, is not the dark side of the moon at all. At the other apex of earth/sun/moon alignment, a full moon occurs when the earth is between the sun and the moon with the full illumination of the sun on the earth facing moon countenance. The graphic below illustrates these facts of celestial physics. 

When the earth lines up exactly between the sun and the moon, we get a lunar eclipse and I would be remise if I did not remind you that this year on the winter solstice (Dec. 21st) there will be a total lunar eclipse visible in most of North America.

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark.

Pink Floyd Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon

Whether San Francisco Weather

The best-laid schemes o' mice and' men

Gang aft agley

Robert Burns

After several autumnal heat waves, true fall weather has arrived here in the Bay area. With the lowering to shivering temperatures comes overcast, undercast, fog banks and assorted sky-sea phenomenon. All of these have combined to make my celestial observations more or less muted the last forty-eight hours. The sun has set into high stacks of clouds the last two evenings, the moonset on Friday was an hour early into a high fog bank and last night there was nary a glow from behind the overcast. Today we awoke to grey with a smattering of gray. I was worried that the full moonset next weekend would be blotted out by the dawn but unless we have another change in weather patterns I will miss this highly anticipated week of solar and lunar settings altogether.

I did manage one shot of the setting sun just north of the golden gate narrows last night, you can clearly make out the Golden Gate Bridge. Hope that was not the last sunset this week.

Beauty I'd always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

Moody Blues

Nights in White Satin

That's Not the Moon

Last night marked the fifth night of close observation of the moon setting into or over San Francisco. One night was done without the aid of my powerful binoculars, I was out and the tripod would have seemed a bit intrusive. Last night was the closest we would get to a perfect quarter moon, it was officially and exactly quartered around 14:30 in the afternoon and our setting time last night over the City was 0:23.

I am a bit disappointed that I have not been able to successfully google pictures that do justice to the visuals I have seen. And I mourn one last time my own shortcomings in the telephoto/nocturnal camera arena. As always I will attempt to paint you a worthy image in words.

I also want to acknowledge my own, previously overlooked, lack of learning in the general area of astronomy. Each and every night I discover another phenomenon that sends me off asurfin' to uncover the physics of the heavens. I won't overburden you with each and every mote of new learning I uncover. I assume some of you know a lot more in this area than I do and many more of you do not want to wade through the formula, azimuths and ephemeris to "know" why the sky is just amazingly fascinating. 

As I said last night was a near perfect quarter moon but the previous evening (also fairly close to a quarter) I could clearly see the other facing quarter of the sphere. Instead of being slightly lighter than the dark sky, last night the dark quarter of the moon was precisely the same pitch as the sky. This meant the moon presented itself as a jagged edged illusion, as if the top half of the moon was not actually there, like the photo above. And while I watched the descent the oranging began. First the white slice became slightly dirty, then a few minutes later a perfectly hued hard taco shell loomed over the Transamerica building. Following the corn flour tan came the slow darkening towards burnt orange, but not without a new visual.

The low clouds over the City created a reflection of some kind, lines of orange would appear below the moon and slowly the two would melt together. At one point the detached line was a bit more red and dancing in the reflected heat of San Francisco. As the two merged it appeared that the lower edge of the setting moon had begun to flame and burn, as if it would need to quench itself in the Pacific.

The final setting was, as it has been for several nights, a complete distortion of the moon's crescent. Last night both the top and bottom tips of the quarter were lost in the over&undercast. Anyone peering through my magic glasses at that moment would have seen a large orange blob just above the buildings of the city. No one would have guessed this was the perfect quarter we had seen twenty minutes before. Finally, instead of descending behind one of San Francisco's many hills, a misty grey cloud rose up and consumed the orange and it was gone again until tonight

Cold hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the colours from our sight

Red is grey and yellow, white

But we decided which is right

               Moody Blues

"Late Lament" from Days of Future Passed

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net photo - uncredited

Celestial Views

I'll put the photo credit up top when it's actually me, so yes that is my picture up there. That is the sky I woke to this morning and that sky will be the focus of my next series of posts. With apologies to my olde friend Lee, eastcoat Lee not southwest Lee, but with apologies to him and anyone else who has tired of my sky gazing... the next week or so will be an extended meditation looking out my window. In last Sunday's post (two down the scroll) I wrote about the moon setting into the skyscape of San Francisco last Saturday night; well, of course, it has done something similar but completely different every evening since. Each night the illuminated portion of the moon gets bigger, it was quartered last night. The hills and buildings of the City that are descended thru shift and the atmosphere, clouds and light change the images sliding through my view. 

What with the earth rotating, the moon setting later each night, the cloud cover shifting, the moon becoming fuller -- the show offers new celestial perspectives each and every night. Add to that the sunset continues to march south and has reached the north end of the Golden Gate narrows (and bridge), this all portents some really interesting sky viewing over the next week. 

The moonset timetable will require some late nights and dark mornings but if the last several days have been any indication it will clearly be worth the lost sleep. Besides there are a few sections of my current book that could use some dark of night influenced attention.

So don't call too early, I'm going deep nocturnal for awhile and together we will ponder the skies through my window.

I can see it all

From this great height

I can feel the sun

Slipping out of sight

And the world still goes on

Through the night

          Moody Blues

          "Sunset" from Days of Future Passed

A Thousand Words

I apologize that I don't have a high-end camera so that I might show you what I saw last night. These photos lifted from the web are only faint shadows of what I will describe for you. But words are my craft so perhaps it is appropriate that I capture the experience with my digits instead of digitally.

Sunset last night was just north of the Golden Gate, after the sun had set behind the Marin Headlands the sky glowed with an orange/blue layered effect. The horizon grew a brighter and deeper orange and the sky above remained illuminated in shades of blue. Of course, I have quite a view from the apartment, I can see nearly fifty miles of San Francisco Bay coastline on each side of the Bay. The City of San Francisco sparkled in the middle of the tableau. 

It was then that I noticed a thin crescent moon just to the south of the City, I knew the moon was setting and wondered if it would plunge into the cityscape below. As I watched the lunar progress it slid lower and slightly further north on its way to the sea. The moon was indeed going to set right over the towers of downtown San Francisco. As I watched through my Super Giant Astronomical Binoculars I glanced down to see with my naked eyes where the moon might impact the City when I noticed something out of place, something very orange. 

It seems that in celebration of the baseball SF Giants making the MLB playoffs, several landmarks have had their normal lighting changed to Giant orange. Coit Tower was one of those attractions, so last night it glowed brilliantly orange. When I looked up again the white crescent had begun to yellow and I realized that the moon takes on yellow and orange hues as it declines through the atmosphere.

You perhaps can imagine what happened next, in the now black sky, a very orange crescent descended directly over a very orange tower and all of my desires to capture the moment peaked. It was simply visually stunning . . . and just when I thought I was seeing natural perfection linked with man-made construction, the final passage began.

As the moon lowered into the atmosphere of the ocean behind the SF peninsula, it also descended into the heat footprint of the City. In the last ten minutes the sharply defined edges of the crescent began to mottle, the sky and the moon began to blur together, the brilliant orange moon became an organic cantaloupe with bumps and depressions along its leading edge.

I made one more false assumption that the moon would sink behind the City as the sun had sunk beyond the Headlands but instead with the double atmosphere of the Pacific and the City, the lower edge of the crescent moon simply dissolved just as the Cheshire Cat had. Slowly the moon disappeared as the dark below consumed it. As the last third stood just above Telegraph Hill, anyone looking up for the first time might have wondered at the strange triangular cloud dimly orange in the night sky.

Wish you had been here to see it with me.

Vespertine Viewing

No I did not take that picture and no I am not doing acid again. But after nearly two weeks of evening fog cover, I finally got several nighttime looks at the moon with my new big eyes. I decided I needed some geographical assistance to know what I am looking at. So I turned to NASA. Twas very kind of NASA to provide a paint-by-the-numbers guide to the lunar surface. The multi-hued photo was actually taken in 1992 by the Galileo spacecraft.

As more planets and phases of the moon drift through the western skies beyond the San Francisco peninsula I will gaze on and share with you more of the view from my perch. For now, the image below is what I saw on the first clear night.

Full Pink Moon

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday 28th) at 8:18 AM EDT [5:18 PDT] will be the exact moment of the next full moon, which means tonight will be the fullest those of us in the Americas will see the moon this month. I will have to hope for an opening in the clouds later tonight because right now its grey and raining across the San Francisco Bay, hopefully where you are, there will be better viewing.

Early civilizations often named the full moons and the months they appeared. Since I am in currently in a part of the world previously populated by "native american" tribes. I thought it might be interesting to look at those labels. So the Wolf Moon in January is in the Wolf month and the Harvest Moon is well you got that one, right?

Tomorrow's is the Pink Full Moon and that might need some explanation. Apparently the moon namers were mostly Eastern and Northern tribes, so the relevance might be lost on us Californians. The grass pink or wild ground phlox is a widespread flower of spring in many parts of the Eastern U.S., hence the pink of the Pink Full Moon. Other lunar names for this month include: the Egg Moon, the Full Sprouting Moon and for those more coastal tribes -- the Full Fish Moon.

In some years the Full Pink Moon is also the Pascal Moon, which sets the date for Easter. The pagan and now christian usurped spring holiday is held the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Vernal equinox was March 20th this year, followed by a Full Worm Moon on March 29th, so we had an early Easter this year on April 4th.

Wherever you are, take a peek tonight at the Pink Full Moon. I am sorely tempted to make some Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon reference. Well wait, I guess I just did.

Next month, the Full Flower Moon.
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photo credit: NASA

Where Were You When?

A couple of weeks ago I commented on the forty year anniversaries of the first moon landing, Woodstock and the Manson murders. Today I woke up to wall-to-wall coverage of the eight year anniversary of 9-11. It made me wonder what events are stamped in the collective conscious of our memories. My apologies to my non-U.S. readers for the jingoism here.

What public events have made a permanent impression on you? The following list is what I think are the big public memory events, they are not necessarily my own personal biggies.

July 20, 1969 The first landing and walk on the moon.

April 12, 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, first human in space.

September 11, 2001 The 9-11.

November 9, 1989 The Berlin Wall comes down.

[June 15, 1961 The Berlin Wall goes up.]

December 25, 1991 The official end of the USSR

May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela sworn in as President of South Africa

December 7, 1941 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

August 16, 1977 Elvis Presley dies.

December 8, 1980 John Lennon dies.

May 14, 1998 Frank Sinatra dies.

November 29, 2001 George Harrison dies.

June 25, 2009 Michael Jackson dies.

September 16, 2009 Mary Travers

November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy assassinated.

April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.

June 6, 1968 Robert F. Kennedy assassinated

March 30, 1981 Assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan

September 5, 1975 Assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford

September 22, 1975 another assassination attempt on President Ford

May 8, 1945 VE (Victory in Europe) Day ends WWII in half of the world.

August 6, 1945 Hiroshima, first atomic bomb dropped.

August 9, 1945 Nagasaki, second atomic bomb dropped.

August 14-15, 1945 VJ (Victory in Japan) Day ends WWII.

April 29, 1975 U.S. troops leave Vietnam.

After the assassination of JFK and the moon landing, my two biggest public memories are:

May 1968 France is shutdown by student/worker strike. I was a student in Germany.

August 9, 1974 Richard Nixon resigns the U.S. Presidency. Still one of the great highlites of my political life and one I still take way too much pleasure in. But . . . once again, "Ding-Dong The Dick is Dead!"

What did I miss from your memories? Remember these are shared public memories, leave out the 'First Time I had ...' send those stories in a private email.

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photo credit: archives

Partially Darken Moon Arisin'

Still a few days from full, a hazy moon rose over Mt. Shasta last evening. My friend was outside outfitting his mini-motor home for a late night departure to begin a long labor day weekend. The rising moon and a big black cat kept us company, while we caught up on the last year or so of our existence. The moon drifting behind the mountain clouds reminded me that my reading from a Bay area astrologer last week had two mentions of a coming lunar eclipses.

This New Year's Eve (2009) there will be a full moon and a partial eclipse, unfortunately not visible where I (or most of you) will be. Not being seeable does not mean the effects of an eclipse on a arithmetically significant day will not trouble, plague or reward you. So for those of my readers who delve into such realms, this NYE could be cautionarily significant. I have been told (or is that foretold?) that it will be a perfect confluence to both end and begin one long term development in my journey. So be wary of the question: 'What are you doing new year's eve?'

More significantly, for all, will be the total lunar eclipse on the winter solstice next year. December 21, 2010 will have a complete eclipse of the moon with totality visible throughout most of North and South America. So plan your solstice celebration early. Change she be acomin' whether you are ready or not. Even in the realms of the absurd or the mystical, depending on your perspective, the advantage goes to the prepared soul.